Way back in `86, a violent little movie called The Hitcher came along and pretty much ended hitchhiking as we know it. The almost-scene-for-scene remake won't give those who travel by thumb any peace, either. Who would pick up a hitchhiker after seeing what Sean Bean can do?

The Hitcher Credit: Focus Features

Bean has the Rutger Hauer role in this "Hitcher," a stylish, jolting remake that has some of the virtues, but also the dramatically unsatisfying amoral plot points, of the original.

Jim (TV actor Zachary Knighton) is 21, with a 1970 Olds 442 muscle car and an absurdly hot girlfriend, Grace (Sophia Bush of "One Tree Hill"). They set off from somewhere to Lake Havasu, Ariz., for spring break.

Then, on a rainy night in Nowhere, N.M., they almost hit this dude standing in the middle of the road. Jim wants to go back and check on him. Grace isn't having it.

That makes for an awkward moment when they meet him at a convenience store down the road.

The Hitcher Credit: Focus Features

"Don't worry about it," the man in the dark trench coat grins and growls. "I wouldn't pick me up either."

But they do. A few miles down the road, he flashes a knife, and we're off. The young couple ditch him, spy him in a car full of a family and kids, wreck as they try to warn that family, and spend the rest of the movie traveling on foot, stalked by The Hitcher. They try to convince assorted cops that these murders that pile up around them are his doing, not theirs. And he just cleans his knife and utters his catch phrase.