first place at the box office with $12.3 million. After initially opening to 2,108 theaters, the film later expanded to 2,348 theaters and grossed a total of $50,159,144 in the United States and Canada. Critical response The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 83% of critics gave the film positive reviews based upon a sample of 58, with an average score of 7.2/10. The site's consensus describes it as "A brainy and suspenseful – if somewhat uneven – thriller". At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 73 based on 19 reviews. David Harkin at Taste of Cinema points out that 'Kurt Russell turns into his own version of John McClane but in cool shades and dusty chinos' Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the film, "Breakdown use[s] old-fashioned ingenuity – plus a compelling star, a fast-paced mystery and a deadpan villain – to come up with a sizzler." Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review, calling it "taut, skillful and surgically effective". Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post criticized Russell for not conveying a desperate husband willing to fight for his missing wife, writing "He does a lot of running around while making desperate faces, but he never projects a sense of deep rage. He never gets dangerous. Thus the movie is shorn of its one primitive gratification: the image of the civilized man who finds the Peruvian commando inside himself and lays waste to louts who have underestimated him." References External links 1997 films 1997 crime thriller films 1990s American films 1990s English-language films 1990s mystery thriller films 1990s road movies 20th Century Fox films American crime thriller films American mystery thriller films American road movies Films about families Films about kidnapping Films about missing people Films directed by Jonathan Mostow Films produced by Dino De Laurentiis Films produced by Martha De Laurentiis Films scored by Basil Poledouris Films set in the United States Films shot in Arizona Films shot in California Films shot in Utah Paramount Pictures films Spelling Films films Trucker films