I remember the first time I watched Steven Spielberg's Duel on TV late one night over a decade ago. That feeling of an unknown adversary, randomly picking on an innocent person, exercising some primitive road rage with his overpowered brute of a truck just fascinated me. I still get chills each time I get tailgated on the freeway by a trucky in a hurry, all because of that movie. Sadly, Highwaymen doesn't reach those levels of suspense.

Rennie Cray (Caviezel) is the poor anti-hero who watches his wife run down in a random hit-run attack. Five years later, the lunatic in a '74 El Dorado is still out causing his own mayhem when Rennie crosses his path again as he comes to the rescue of the latest random victim, Molly (Rhona Mitra), a dead set contender if the producers ever wanted to replace Linda Hamilton in the Terminator franchise.

Whilst there are great moments in this movie, certain aspects subdue the suspense. As much as Duel made every effort to conceal the identity of the truck driver, Highwaymen slowly reveals our antagonist. At first glimpse we only get to see certain 'components', such as the metal leg flooring the accelerator or a metal arm changing the gears. At one point, with said Linda Hamilton look alike in peril, the movie seemed like a possible episode from a Terminator TV series.

Yes, I can understand the need for these things to be explained, but there is still some intelligence left in the audience to allow them to make their own throughtful assumptions. Take away the fun of examining the movie after the fact and you're left with a microwave dinner; heat and stir. Are you listening Mr Lucas?

As always, Roadshow have provided a fantastic encoding of the video with sharp detail throughout, deep blacks, nicely saturated color and a nice range from dark background to bright foreground. If there is anything to be critical about it would be the film source, but even then I'd have to be a celluloid Nazi to find fault.

On the audio side, whilst the encoding is fine, there seems to be something a miss with the soundtrack. When you're so used to a full blown sound fest and you know what to expect from your movies and you don't get it at a particular point, your ears send a signal to your brain with a response to your emotions saying "ERROR: That's odd". For instance, in one scene where you would expect to hear the howl of a V8, you only hear a purr, but cut to a different camera angle and boom, there it is. It's those little inconsistencies that ruin the experience. There's no ambience whatsoever, outside of the score, and whatever there is, it seems forced and too obvious.

Those wanting a decent collection of extras to compliment their purchase will be disappointed in obtaining the sole theatrical trailer. If it's any consolation, there are some nice menus here to look at whilst getting comfy on the couch for those few seconds.

I certainly shouldn't be comparing it to Duel. It is different, it has its moments and is a decent movie for a late night viewing; only let down by a baffling soundtrack.