It’s directed with miles of style by Dominic Sena, it moves at a thoughtful pace that gives its characters room to breathe and Brad Pitt seems to have a great time putting on a hayseed accent and playing an outrageous psycho, but what most elevates this seedy serial killer road movie above a zillion similar B-movies is Juliette Lewis. She’s terrific as Adele, Pitt’s long-suffering girlfriend who tries to smile through one fucked-up life. Adele’s sad and truly strange. On some level, she might like being dominated by a creep, but, then again, that’s all she knows. There’s something better out there, she can feel it—but she doesn’t understand it. That’s why when she meets an independent woman (Michelle Forbes, rocking a Louise Brooks bob), she imitates her like a child might clumsily imitate an adult. Lewis rides Adele’s nervous system without fear, giving voice and movement to her inarticulate anxiety. She gives us a person for whom we don’t know what the future holds, but we have a feeling it’s going to be bad. It’s the meatiest role in the film. By comparison everyone else is a caricature, from Pitt’s snarling murderer to David Duchovny’s frustrated writer who finds himself in the company of these creeps on his cross-country road trip to visit serial killer landmarks. Lewis gives a bravura performance. It’s a rarely sung milestone.
This was a box office bomb in its day and Dominic Sena wouldn’t get another film off the ground until seven years later, but a cult has emerged.