Road Flower

A cautionary thriller which plays like a cross between The Hitcher and Cape Fear. It's the story of a middle-class family whose vacation turns into a nightmare when they get on the wrong side of a bunch of tearaways halfway across a Midwestern desert. Goaded into playing chicken with the youths, one adult ends up dead, and the others are taken prisoner while the mentally unstable leader (Sheffer) decides how to dispose of them. After a taut, provocative opening, the improbabilities soon mount up (a situation not helped by Sheffer's OTT performance). The film never really finds its feet, but settles down to a series of action clichés (note how Lambert's specs disappear once his gravitas has been established). It's ironic, given the emphasis on dysfunctional families of one kind or another, that the film is itself a family affair: written and produced by Tedi Sarafian, while sometime director Richard Sarafian appears in a cameo role.