Breakdown follows a man and his wife who are driving cross-country from Massachusetts to San Diego when their new car mysteriously breaks down.

[3][4][5] While driving from Boston to San Diego in their new Jeep Grand Cherokee, Jeff Taylor and his wife Amy narrowly avoid colliding with a beat-up pickup truck in Arizona.

Leaving Jeff with the Jeep, Amy accepts a ride from a passing tractor trailer driver to get to a nearby diner and call for help.

The trucker, Red Barr, is allowed to leave and Boyd tells Jeff to see the deputy sheriff in the town of Brackett.

Billy, a mentally-impaired mechanic, informs Jeff that Amy left with some men, but refuses to speak with the police, claiming they are involved.

Their leader is Red Barr, who wants the $90,000 in Jeff's bank account in exchange for Amy's life, ordering him to withdraw the money in the nearby town of Brackett.

However, paranoid that Red's group is watching him, Jeff abandons the idea and steals marked money ribbons and a letter opener.

Earl begins gloating about how Jeff and his wife were easy targets, how he tampered with their Jeep, and that his group intends to kill them anyway.

Jeff takes over the vehicle, binds Earl, and tortures him to reveal his rendezvous with Red at a local truck stop.

Jeff sneaks into the barn, discovering evidence that Red and his accomplices have a history of robbing and killing tourists, and that his real name is Warren.

Jeff and Amy steal a pickup truck and flee, while Billy returns to free his accomplices, who each pursue the Taylors in their own vehicles.

[6] The score was written by Basil Poledouris, with contributions from Steve Forman, Judd Miller, Eric Colvin and Richard Marvin.

This is not 100% complete, omitting a few extremely low-key passages from the early scenes, nor is it chronological – some cues have been combined and re-ordered to maintain a listening experience.

[14] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle praised the film, "Breakdown use[s] old-fashioned ingenuity – plus a compelling star, a fast-paced mystery and a deadpan villain – to come up with a sizzler.

Thus the movie is shorn of its one primitive gratification: the image of the civilized man who finds the Peruvian commando inside himself and lays waste to louts who have underestimated him.