
            Married couple Jeff and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) are driving across the country from Boston to California. While driving through somewhere in rural New Mexico, they almost collide with another truck on the road. Jeff is later confronted by its driver, a hostile redneck cowboy named Earl (M.C. Gainey), at a gas station.A short time afterwards, their car breaks down in the middle of the desert. Amy accepts a ride with a passing trucker named "Red" Barr (J. T. Walsh) to a small diner about five miles down the road to call for help, while Jeff stays with the car. Jeff discovers disconnected wires to be the problem with the car and drives to the diner, but no one there has seen his wife. While driving to the nearest police station, Jeff spots Barr's truck and runs him off the road. The trucker swears that he has never seen her, or Jeff, before. Jeff hails a passing sheriff, but a brief search of Barr's truck is fruitless for Amy is nowhere to be found. Jeff tries to tell the sheriff (Rex Linn) that the trucker is lying about not remembering him or Amy, but the sheriff tells Jeff that he should drive to his station about 20 miles down the road and file a missing person's report.Jeff drives to a local police station where he talks with the deputy (Kim Robillard), about his wife's disappearance. The Deputy advises Jeff to go back to the diner and wait for his wife. Jeff does so, but he cannot get any cooperation or help from the diner owner or any of the patrons. When Jeff insists on looking at the receipts in the last few hours, the diner owner threatens him with a rifle, forcing Jeff to leave.Outside the diner, Jeff is asking all persons coming and leaving if they have seen his wife, which none of them respond that they have. Jeff ends up meeting Billy (Jack Noseworthy), a local simpleton and mechanic, who says that he saw his wife arrive with Red and leave in another truck driven by a cowboy. Billy then tells Jeff where they have taken her, but tells him not to go the police because they may be involved.Following the directions that Billy gave him, Jeff drives down a rural back road, running into a gate at a construction site. While he tries to figure out his next move, he's ambushed by Earl. After a short car chase, Jeff escapes by driving his car into a river. He exits the sinking car and floats down the river, later circling back around to where his attackers are salvaging it from the water. He is then found and knocked out by Billy.Jeff awakes in the trunk of a car. Billy (who drops his simpleton routine) opens it and asks how much money Jeff has, which is then demanded in exchange for his wife, who is being held hostage. The two rednecks, Billy and Earl, remove Jeff from the trunk and bring him to their ringleader standing nearby... who happens to be Red Barr. Barr demands that Jeff withdraw a large sum of cash in exchange for Amy from a local bank in the nearby small town of Brackett. Barr gravely warns him that they'll be watching him closely. If Jeff doesn't comply fully, Barr promises to kill and mutilate Amy.Jeff heads into the local bank to withdraw money and starts to confide in the bank manager about what is going on, but is dissuaded by an unknown person entering the bank. Unsure of who is part of the conspiracy holding his wife hostage, Jeff stops talking. While the manager is busy with the transaction, Jeff takes some money ribbons and a letter opener from the manager's desk. After leaving the bank with the money, Jeff is contacted by Barr from a payphone to leave the town by walking, where he is picked up by Earl.While gloating about how easy Jeff and his wife were to trick and implying that they intend to kill them anyway, Earl discovers that Jeff has wrapped stacks of $1 bills with a single $100 bill on the top and the bottom of the stacks, using the money ribbons he took from the bank manager's desk. Jeff then stabs Earl with the knife that he stole and forces him to reveal where his wife is. But just then, the same sheriff from the beginning of the film, seeing the truck being driven erratically, pursues and attempts to arrest both Earl and Jeff. Earl shoots the sheriff with a pistol concealed in his boot. Just as Earl is about to shoot Jeff, the wounded sheriff shoots and kills Earl. Jeff uses the Sheriff's radio to call for an ambulance and leaves behind the wounded sheriff to find his wife.Although initially unsuccessful at finding Billy or his wife at the truck stop Earl mentioned, Jeff spots Red Barr, who is preoccupied with a telephone call to an accomplice. Seeing two State Troopers searching for a suspect in the shooting of the sheriff, Jeff manages to jump onto Barr's moving truck at it pulls out of the truck stop. After driving all night, Red Barr arrives at his family's farm where he greets his wife and teenage son, whom they address as 'Warren'. Jeff hides in a barn and watches as Red, Billy, and a fourth accomplice, a tow truck driver named Al, take Amy from a compartment underneath a moving van that they've also stashed Jeff's Jeep in. They lock her in a freezer in the basement under the barn to suffocate and return to the house. Jeff also discovers that Red and his accomplices have apparently been preying upon unsuspecting travelers and truckers for some time now by stealing their money, luggage and cargo and killing them afterward.Jeff finds a pistol in the moving van and enters the house and demands the basement keys from Red. Red's teenage son appears with a rifle and threatens Jeff, but accidentally shoots Al in the arm after Jeff knocks the gun from his hands. Jeff forces them to return to the barn. Red's wife opens the barn basement, and frees Amy from the freezer. Jeff locks everyone in the basement, then he and Amy find a pickup truck at a nearby abandoned trailer home. They manage to drive off just as Red tries to run them down in his semi.As dawn begins to break, Billy, Al, and Red pursue Jeff and Amy on the highway; the former in cars and the latter in his truck. Billy's and Al's cars are forced off the road when Red's trailer jackknifes, but Red follows them onto a bridge and tries to push the pickup truck over the edge. Amy's leg gets pinned underneath the dashboard, but Jeff escapes and fights Red in his truck, which then falls off the bridge and gets stuck on a barrier support. While Jeff hangs from the truck, Red tries to whip him off with a chain but Jeff grabs it and Red falls off the truck and to the rocks below. Jeff frees Amy and the two look down at the seemingly-dead Red, who then starts to move. Amy (clearly shaken and teeming with rage) then pulls the automatic shifter on their pickup truck which has been holding Red's truck in place and it falls and crushes him. Relieved that their nightmare is over, the final shot shows Jeff and Amy standing in the middle of the bridge beside their damaged pickup truck looking over the guardrail at the bottom of the ravine at the burning truck.
    

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