Switchback (film)
| Switchback | |
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| Directed by | Jeb Stuart |
| Produced by | Mel Efros Keith Samples Jeb Stuart Gale Anne Hurd |
| Written by | Jeb Stuart |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Basil Poledouris |
| Edited by | Conrad Buff |
| Distributed by |
Paramount Pictures (United States) Rysher Entertainment (worldwide) |
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Release date
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Running time
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118 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $38 million |
| Box office | $6,492,660 |
Switchback is a 1997 thriller starring Dennis Quaid, Danny Glover, Jared Leto, Ted Levine, William Fichtner and R. Lee Ermey, set in Amarillo, Texas and moving through New Mexico and Southern Colorado. It was written and directed by Jeb Stuart.
The film opens on a quiet suburban home, where a babysitter is tending a young boy at night. A stranger comes to the door and asks to visit the boy, but the babysitter turns him away. While she secures the rest of the house, she is grabbed from behind and an unseen killer slices open her femoral artery. The killer goes upstairs and wraps the young boy in a blanket.
Three months later, a man and a cleaning woman are killed in a motel room in Amarillo, Texas. The man's femoral artery was severed and the woman's throat was cut. Longtime sheriff, Buck Olmstead (R. Lee Ermey), is up for re-election. Both Olmstead and his opponent, city police chief Jack McGinnis (William Fichtner), are eager to be the one to solve such a big murder case before Election Day.
Meanwhile, Lane Dixon (Jared Leto), a hitchhiker bound for is picked up by Bob (Danny Glover), a drifter driving a white Cadillac Eldorado upholstered with pictures of naked women. Unnerved by the pictures, Dixon asks to be let out of the car at a miners' bar, which Bob warns against. Dixon is in the bar for a few minutes before getting beat up by a group of miners. Bob rescues Dixon and sends him out to retrieve the car. As Dixon drives them away, Bob reveals that he has slashed all the tires in the parking lot.
Back in Amarillo, FBI agent Frank LaCrosse (Dennis Quaid) arrives to inform Olmstead about his investigation of an elusive serial killer, whom he suspects is responsible for the motel murders. They track down the red SUV that was spotted driving away from the motel. LaCrosse confronts the owner, who has barricaded himself in an apartment and taken a family hostage. LaCrosse finds out that the man stole the SUV, and immediately deduces that he does not fit the profile of his killer. But his long criminal history, which includes previous violent crimes, makes McGinnis eager to pin the motel murders on the man. His lawyer reveals to LaCrosse and Olmstead that the man had stolen the SUV from an airport parking lot. Olmstead's men check the surveillance tapes at the lot and find the plates for a white Cadillac Eldorado, which belonged to one of the serial killer's victims. They put out an APB on the car.
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