The Plot:

  When a young couple takes a road trip they encounter and picks up a psychotic hitchhiker who frames them for a string of murders he has committed. The film breaks out into a high speed chase that puts the couple in serious peril of life and limb.

The Point:

  To start with, people who have made their name directing music videos don’t tend to do well when they take on directing movies. Examples to support this theory include Joel Schumacher, the man now infamous for putting nipples on the Batsuit in Batman Returns and McG who gave us the revised world of Charlie’s Angels. Dave Meyers, an accomplished music video director, can now be added to that list with his work on The Hitcher.
  The movie seems to have no sense of pace and is pretty much a continual chase scene (think Speed only the bomber is personally killing his victims and you never now about the “I used to be a cop” subplot).
  On the screenwriting front, this movie was so superficial and brought to bear such weak plot devices as to render it nearly unwatchable. It is very hard for even the best actor to salvage a bad script, but occasionally it does happen. However in The Hitcher Sean Bean, who is frequently cast as a villain but never quite struck me as the psychotic serial killer type, couldn’t do anything for it. 
  Performances by the other characters were ok, but again a bad foundation leads to a poorly constructed building just like a bad script leads to a poorly constructed movie.
  If you want to see this movie, watch the version from the mid-80s with Rutger Hauer.