Freeway

Freeway is a 1996 crime thriller that reworks the Little Red Riding Hood story in a contemporary American setting. Teenager Vanessa Lutz, whose home life involves a drug-addicted mother and an abusive stepfather, runs away to find the grandmother she has never met. Her car breaks down, and she accepts a ride from Bob Wolverton, a school counselor who works with troubled young people. During the trip she comes to believe that her driver is the serial killer the radio has been reporting on, and she shoots him and flees. He survives, and the authorities treat her as the aggressor rather than a victim, leaving her pursued by a man who presents himself as a respectable professional. The film is a thriller with darkly comic elements, and it avoids showing how the confrontation with Wolverton finally ends.

Matthew Bright wrote the screenplay and directed the film, the first of three features he made. Reese Witherspoon plays Vanessa and Kiefer Sutherland plays Wolverton, with Dan Hedaya and Wolfgang Bodison as the detectives, Amanda Plummer as Vanessa's mother, and Brooke Shields as Wolverton's wife. Produced on a budget of about 3 million dollars by companies from the United States and France, the film received moderate approval: on IMDb it holds 6.8 out of 10 from more than thirty thousand votes, on TMDB 6.5 out of 10 from a much smaller number of votes, and a critics' rating of 6.9 out of 10 from forty-two reviews, so critical and audience responses were close to each other.