Road Rage (TV Movie 1999) Poster

(1999 TV Movie)

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6/10
Although Having Many Clichés, Some Bad Acting and Exaggeration in the Plot, It is an Efficient Low-Budget Thriller
claudio_carvalho22 February 2005
The truck driver Eddie Madden (Jere Burns) loses his family in a car accident while driving leaving town on vacation. Some months later, he becomes a deranged man, and his boss waives his faults and keeps his job expecting for his complete recovery. When the real-state agent Ellen Carson (Yasmine Bleeth) accidentally cuts his truck off, Eddie threatens her with his vehicle. Ellen calls the 0800 and presents a complaint against his aggressive behavior in the traffic. Eddie is fired, finds her identity, and stalks Ellen, her husband Jim Carson (John Wesley Shipp) and her fifteen years old stepdaughter Cynthia Carson (Alana Austin), manipulating them and menacing their safety. Although having many clichés, a ham actor (John Wesley Shipp) and an actress completely miscast (Alana Austin), and lots of exaggeration in the plot, "Road Rage" is an efficient low-budget thriller. It is hard to believe the inefficiency of the police to arrest Eddie, or the lack of safety in the Carson's house, but anyway the story hooks the attention of the viewer until the last scene, mostly supported by the excellent performances of Yasmine Bleeth and Jere Burns. I saw this movie on VHS, I had the chance to repeat the scene and I noted the terrible edition of the car accident in the beginning of the film: there is a cut, when the red car stops, and in the next scene, it crashes Eddie's truck. See this movie without a great expectation, and the viewer may have a reasonably good surprise. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Pânico na Estrada" ("Panic in the Road")
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5/10
No one cares for the unlucky guy
guidomaschio3 September 2007
Warning: Spoilers
This movie is below average, no doubt. I rented this DVD and it was a bit of a let down. But I must say that the "villain" character is very well acted by Jere Burns. In fact until 3/4 of the movie (when a murder occurs) I partially sided for him. Think for a while: the guy's wife and daughter - the ones he loved - were killed in a car accident. A tragedy like THAT can really make yourself mad. So why the guy wasn't cured or get assisted after that tragedy? To me is unbelievable that no one cared for the guy after his big personal drama.

Had anybody cared maybe he could have stopped his descent into madness, but no one did.

So for me it was difficult to see Burns as the real "villain" of the story. Sure when the first murder takes place he shifted immediately in the "bad guy" category, but until that point I felt some sympathy for him and his tragedy. Kudos to Jere Burns that did his part very well, showing the complexities of the character.

Apart Burns acting and few thrilling sequences (i.e. when "Burns" character pretends to be a customer and visits the house's cellar trying to draw "Yasmine Bleeth" character down) the movie is really dumb (and unfair), 'coz there are too much far-fetched situations.
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5/10
Cocky car crazy Kook cruises, crashes & controls cut-off queen in kinky, corny caper
helpless_dancer24 August 2002
This is a prime example of been there, done that filming. Hasn't been that long since I saw one very much like this in which a pair of loonies terrorized a family with a car: a situation which could have been resolved with a good twice barrel 12 gauge scattergun. Not that this was a complete waste of time, but the producers were just operating within the old psycho/scared woman mold which has been beaten to death over the years. These folks knew who the bad guy was; why not merely show up at his doorstep late one night and pour a SUV full of high octane whup-ass on the sucker's pointy little head till he got the message that anymore highway hijinks would be totally unacceptable. Only if you just gotta see a film and nothing else is playing.
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This will teach those not to cut people off on the road.
hammer_pants3 October 1999
Jere Burns plays a psycho driver in this movie who was cut off by Yasmine Bleeth. Personally, I side with Jere Burns in this movie. No one should be able to cut you off and get away with it. (Hint, Hint, my comments reflect what the movie is about). This is a cat and mouse movie, Yasmine Bleeth being the Mouse, and Jere Burns being the Cat, or rather should I say the Psycho Beast Cat who wants revenge against the mouse for cutting him off on the road. If you have a chance to watch this movie, do it. It is a very suspenseful, action filled, and fun movie.
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1/10
Road Rage was really bad
nedsmithtn5 July 2006
Warning: Spoilers
This movie really sucked. From the police response to the bitter end, it was really bad. I can't believe I wasted two hours. How many lines to say it was bad. Yasmine was bad. The villain was good. The police were totally unbelievable. The husband was bad. This must have been a Junior High Project. I can't believe Lifetime showed this. The daughter was bad. The grandmother was bad. Mostly, everything was bad. OK, it looks like I've got six more lines to type. I don't usually care about writing comments about a movie, but I feel so strongly about this being a bad movie that I'm here trying to create drivel about how bad this movie was. The police were so totally unbelievable, ya wanted to gag. Why does it take a restraining order the whole movie to invoke?
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5/10
house wife meets nut on the highway
larrerv20 January 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I've seen this movie a couple of times,usually on Lifetime Movie Network.It is just good enough to suck me in and I end up watching the whole thing.You can tell it's a low budget TV movie,but they actually did a decent job with what they had to work with.There are times this movie is suspenseful and other times when it is just down right terrifying!Ex baywatch babe Yasmine Bleethe does a very good acting job,most of the time you really believe she is being terrorized.The rest, of the cast also does a decent job.The part about her friend is predictable.All in all a decent thriller with an ending certainly drips with irony!
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4/10
Well, it DID start on the road ..
Redbreast77726 August 2001
Warning: Spoilers
It started on the road and probably shouldn't have gone farther. Psycho delivery driver gets fired due to poor driving. Stalks woman who reported him, and her family. I would tell you the ending but technically that would be a spoiler - though nothing could really spoil this cookie cutter predictable attempt. A very UN-thrilling thriller. May attract a few young males hoping to see Yasmine Bleethe in Baywatch attire - but, sorry guys - no bikini today.
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6/10
Surprisingly good - entertaining and stressful
raulfaust27 October 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This is the kind of movie that people who cares about justice and protection shouldn't watch to. There's much disregard from the cops and from that skeptic detective.

The family is stalked by a crazy dude who has more strategy and determination than the own Police Corporation. It makes the spectator gets angry and nervous with people that don't believe the family is being stalked.

In the beginning of the movie we have a feeling that 2 of 3 family members are going to die, and the one who survives (probably the daughter) would make justice on earth. But that's not what happened, fortunately they avoided this kind of cliché. Good movie, good suspense, middling acting and nice ending ;)

EDIT 2011: I just saw "Cape Fear" and it's clear that "Road Rage" used almost the same story... my rate for it went from 8 to 6 now.
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1/10
Horrible Movie
indianahoosier14 July 2002
This had to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Although the plot was somewhat unique, the acting was certainly predictable in every sense of the word. If you ever get the chance to see this movie, take your family for a drive instead... but don't cut anyone off.
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7/10
Difficult to take sides
nicholas.rhodes1 March 2006
Warning: Spoilers
A pretty good suspense film with some hairy moments although some of the events are hard to believe and the final crash is rather over-dramatic. To be quite frank, the lady Ellen ( Bleeth) brought this on herself with her bad driving at the beginning ( also, you'd have to be completely MAD to drive at the same time as holding a telephone receiver !!) so it's difficult to feel any real sympathy for her initially as she is just getting paid back for being so stupid to cut the other guy off. But obviously they guy is intent on making her pay for all his woes and this is where the film becomes more interesting and tense. But in a real-life situation I cannot see someone getting away with things in the way that Madden did. You feel that he was allowed this license uniquely to make the film tense and sensational, and it's true that to a certain extent it works. The other thing is, how could her step daughter be so dumb as to believe Madden when he presented himself as a recruiter from the University of California and to just leave with him on the faith that he said he had the OK from her stepmother ? The question I ask myself is : are human beings really that dumb and stupid ?
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7/10
Great Yasmine
chandler2424 January 2005
I think this movie was a great opportunity for Yasmine Bleeth to show that she can do more that look good in her former red swimsuit (Baywatch). I really enjoyed this TV-movie, it's so amazing it has a great cast, over all Jere Burns, the perfect madman.

John Wesley-Shipp acts OK, but i don't like as Yasmine's husband in the movie, they are not a good couple. He makes a very similar role to Mitch, his character on Dawson's Creek. Not very interesting.

One of the best movies for Bleeth. What a pity she stopped her career because of coke. She was beautiful and talented. Not many Baywatch babes played good roles after their departure from the show. Who remembers Donna D'Errico or Traci Bingham? Yasmine was one of the best.
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Good thriller.
martymaster28 December 2001
Yasmine Bleeth has really played in a lot of thriller tv movies and all of them are kind of good. This one is maybe one of the best and it is about a madman who is after her to kill her,because she cut him off in traffic(really sick guy).The madman is excellent played by Jere Burns. Yasmine Bleeth is sexy as always and deliver decent performance.
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Waste of viewing time
guilfisher-14 March 2007
Warning: Spoilers
First of all I turned this loser off 2/3s the way in. It just was stupid choices made. Namely the police who didn't have a clue and seemed to be walking in a trance not knowing what was going on. Then there's the leading lady played by Yasmine Bleeth, who seems to make all the wrong moves. When finally she escapes with her stepdaughter, played terribly, what does she do? She gets in her car and locks all the doors. When the villain, played very well by Jere Burns, follows her and begins to slam into her car with his van, what does she do? She tells her daughter to get out of the car. What idiot would do that? With the guy right out there next to her. Dumbest move ever. I turned the thing off when she did that and really didn't care what happened to her. To me, she deserved it. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Although I did like John Welsey Shipp. Think he's getting a bad rap for this flick.
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Oh My God - 5 things that made no sense
forrestarnold24 September 2005
My issues with this movie....

1.) Nobody gets THAT angry about being cut off, seriously. The movie is not even about road rage.

2.) Yasmine Bleeth files a restraining order against a guy she's never even laid eyes on, how will she know if he violates it?

3.) John Wesley Shipp sucked as her husband, he finds out the psycho was in their house and automatically accuses her of banging him.

4.) Alana Austin plays her new step-daughter. Would a newly married woman really care THAT much about someone else's kid? Psycho thinks so.

5.) Are cops really THAT naive? They buy Psycho's lies as facts, and disregard Bleeth's statements from the get go. Why?

I had to watch this just to see how the hell the writer summed it all up. Does Psycho die or go to jail? Stay tuned to Lifetime channel Saturday mornings. My God, I watched this whole movie.
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Not enough road rage.
mikej-45 October 1999
I drive 500 miles a week on metro LA freeways, so I know about road rage. There is alot of potential for such a topic, but this made for TV movie exploited only a small fraction. The actual topic was stalking. Actual road rage is very anonymous stuff, acted out from behind the shell of your automobile. The script is very unoriginal, but I guess that it is the norm nowadays, especially in network prime time. I saw bits of "Duel", "Crash", "Play Misty For Me" and "Cape Fear". On the other hand, I really appreciated the film as part of the genre of "bad drama". It was really bad. I mean you get a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and a rent a stud Contractor with a 16 year old daughter who has a hard time looking under 25 and then you get a frustrated pitcher out of the San Diego Padres bullpen in a big Ford Bronco and then give them silly dialogue and, well, its made for TV as seen on TV.

This movie works if you have been stuck in a hospital bed for two days waiting to go into labor, as has my wife, so we considered it the high point of an otherwise monotonous day.
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Network for Women?
westpac1 May 2003
Movies like this seem to be the staple of the Lifetime cable network. Do women really enjoy these endlessly repetitive women-in-jeopardy flicks? Utterly forgettable by-the-numbers trash. In movies like this the cops always claim there's nothing they can do so the "victim" can take the law into their own hands. I guess that's called empowerment. Jere Burns is a creepy slimy stalker, but the rest of the cast, and movie, are forgettable. * out of *****
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Kind of creepy
Sharbysy3 October 1999
I just finished watching it. Thought it was an ok movie. Jere Burns (I knew him as Kirk on Dear John) was pretty creepy. There was a lot of suspense and some might find it to be a good movie, but I really don't like creepy movies. It just felt like a movie that I've seen a hundred times already... nothing new.
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A typical made for tv movie
Lindsay-125 October 1999
I have seen some real cheesy made for tv movies in my time but this one really takes the cake. For one, why is it called ROAD RAGE? This movie is 80% about some sick guy obsessing over some chick that cut him off. I have to admit that I did get a nightmare after I watched this movie. It did freak me out a little. The movie was not horrible but it could have been better. With TV movies like Noah's Ark and Merlin standards should have been set.
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Yasmine battles the malady of the 1990's
Sycotron4 October 1999
Yasmine Bleeth cuts off the driver of a delivery truck and spends the next 2 hours fighting for her life. How appropriate the man is driving a bevRAGE delivery truck. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation you can use this movie as a blueprint for how to avoid disaster. This movie pretty much goes through the motions without too much effort. A little more raving by the villain would have added some camp value.
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