“Thieves Highway” Revvs Up With Rustlers, Chaos, and Aaron Eckhart Going Full Grit

If you thought cattle rustling was a dusty old Western trope, Thieves Highway is here to lasso that idea, drag it across the desert, and set it on fire. Vertical has dropped the official trailer for Jesse V. Johnson’s new action thriller, and it wastes no time throwing Aaron Eckhart into the middle of nowhere with nothing but grit, bruises, and a suspiciously unreliable cell signal.

 

Eckhart stars as Frank Bennett, a lone lawman who stumbles into a stolen-cattle conspiracy big enough to make a rancher cry. After a deadly dust-up leaves him stranded without his truck, Bennett discovers he’s the last obstacle between a gang of dangerous rustlers and the border. And because the universe has a sense of humor, that gang is led by an unhinged ex-military commander who looks like he flosses with barbed wire.

 

The trailer starts off looking like your standard tough-guy-vs-bad-guys showdown—until halfway through when the action goes bonkers, Bennett loses every ounce of chill he ever had, and the film suddenly swerves from “maybe corny?” to “actually, wait, this looks wild.” There’s punching, chaos, more punching, and a blonde antagonist who clearly underestimated Eckhart’s Tuesday.

 

Alongside Eckhart, the film features Devon Sawa, Lochlyn Munro, Darin Cooper, and Lucy Martin, all navigating Travis Mills’ screenplay (from a story by Mills & J.D. Pepper). Produced by Corey Large, Thieves Highway is set to hit theaters on December 12th, with a digital release following on the 16th. Whether it becomes a gritty sleeper hit or simply the most entertaining cattle-related meltdown of the year, one thing is clear: this highway is anything but smooth.

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