Kurt Russell's Breakdown Role Had Him Experiencing New Levels Of Pain

When Kurt Russell shed his Disney child star image once and for all as the leathery, laconic renegade Snake Plissken in John Carpenter's dystopian action hit "Escape from New York," he seemed poised for a long career as a handsome, rough-and-tumble leading man, the John Wayne-Steve McQueen hybrid America needed now that both had hit the soil. Russell, however, had other plans.

For starters, Russell didn't dig the laconic shtick. After a tonally similar performance as the perpetually cheesed-off R.J. MacReady in Carpenter's "The Thing," the actor sought to send up his tough-guy persona in goofball action flicks like "Big Trouble in Little China" and "Tango & Cash." He also gleefully made a fool of himself in broad comedies (memorably/infamously in "Overboard" and "Captain Ron"), while playing in-over-their-heads everymen in thrillers like "The Mean Season" and "Unlawful Entry." He could still do the gruff act when called upon (most notably in "Backdraft" and "Tombstone"), but he didn't want to stay in one mode for too long.

I love all flavors of Kurt Russell, but I think he's most interesting as an actor when he plays weak men who either rise to the occasion or get exposed in the heat of a crisis. Russell did the latter brilliantly in Ron Shelton's corrupt cop drama "Dark Blue," and went in the exact opposite direction in Jonathan Mostow's feature-directing debut "Breakdown." Cast as a softish city dweller whose cross-country road trip turns into a desert-road crucible when a trucker (J.T. Walsh) kidnaps his wife (Kathleen Quinlan), Russell is vulnerable and, at times, overmatched. We're with him, but we don't necessarily believe in him.

It's a fascinating place for Russell to be, and according to his director it took a heavy physical toll on him.

In an interview with Nick Pinkerton for Metrograph, Mostow recalled a moment from late in the shoot when Russell approached him and made a surprising confession. According to Mostow:

"[W]e were hanging out between shots, waiting for the lighting or whatever, and Kurt says to me, 'You know, I've been coming home every night from this movie telling Goldie [Hawn], 'I'm in pain. I'm in physical pain making this film,' and I don't understand it because I've done action films with far more demanding stunt work than what's in this film. But I come home, and my shoulders hurt, my neck hurts. I just don't understand.'"

Russell's character obviously takes his lumps throughout the movie, but these are love taps compared to the beatings he takes in the Carpenter actioners or "Tango & Cash." It finally dawned on Russell why the gig was wearing him down. Per Mostow:

"He realized it's the character. He's playing this character who's walking around, hunched up all the time. I kind of kept this to myself, but my immediate thought was, 'Yeah, because you're playing me in this thing.'"

Maybe that's why some of us rate this performance high in Russell's filmography: he's never been more like us! I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm of little use under the hood of a car, and if I had to match wits with a trucker who knows the Arizona highways much better than I do, I'd be in the same predicament as Russell's protagonist.

You never see Stallone or Schwarzenegger look this utterly helpless. Willis, yes, but he usually offsets his powerlessness with wise-acre quips. Russell's just an ordinary man desperate to rescue his wife, and at no point in the film is it clear how he'll triumph. That's the Kurt difference!