Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

city-people-film Road to Nowhere is auteur director Monte Hellman's first film in 21 years and is a breathtaking return to cinema. The film premiered in competition at the 67th Venice Int' Film Festival and won the Jury Award Special Lion for Career Achievement. This recognition is a testament to the quality of the film as well as the genius of the filmmaker behind it. The film also features a terrific cameo from legendary film actor Fabio Testi. I look forward to many more films from Hellman in the future. His latest project is 'Love or Die', which is scheduled to commence shooting in Lisbon in March 2014. He is truly one of the greatest film directors in the history of American film.William Anderson

yingyangpanda This movie makes your brain a road to nowhere. Although confusingly slow, for some. For others depth is more important. So deep you cant look around cause everything looks the same.I watched this movie for the first time on 3 beautiful tabs of perception enhancers and it made me change life perspective and my own personality. How much of it was the movie I Don't know. The movie changes perspective the whole time. It. Is. Odd.People who think they are creative will hate this movie cause it will pee in their eyes.Real people who 'think' regularly will be enchanted by the detail. They will laugh while the ignorant cry. Bottom line: not for anyone.

MARIO GAUCI The director's first effort in 21 years shows he has lost none of his craftsmanship: the film is closest in tone to TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971) from his earlier work, in that it starts to tell a particular tale but, whilst losing sight of its objective along the way, ends up revealing the real truth underneath, as it were. Given its device of having the movie-making business serve as backdrop to a puzzle, I somehow expected this to be akin to MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) – but I am glad to report that the film very much adheres to the themes Hellman liked to explore well before David Lynch became a household word! This usually involves an odyssey where the protagonist obsesses over something or other, but the answers that he comes up with ultimately say more about himself than anything else! In addition, we have several layers of perception going on at once here: the noir-ish story itself, a film being shot based on this, the insurance investigation that might have detected links between the two, and a parallel probe by a female blogger that tries to make sense of the whole! Though the central intrigue (incorporating pretty standard elements i.e. an embezzler, a femme fatale and the cop on their trail eventually opting for a cut of the proceeds) is rather sketchily presented, one is still engrossed enough to wish that a solution to the mystery had been provided. Indeed, the waters are further muddled towards the end by not only suggesting that it is still an ongoing plot strand but by having these characters and their movie incarnations played by the self-same actors (the scene in question, in fact, seems to have elicited sheer befuddlement from eminent movie critic Roger Ebert)! Incidentally, casting is effective all around – and especially Shannyn Sossamon's heroine – though I was only familiar with two of its members, namely Dominique Swain (as the blogger-turned-amateur-reporter, who becomes attached beyond the 'call of duty' to the insurance man) and Fabio Testi (a Hellman regular, appearing briefly in the part of the leading lady's father). The male protagonist, then, is the movie's young director – named Mitchell Haven, it is no coincidence that he shares Monte Hellman's own initials: he too begins a romance (with Sossamon), gets in too deep (so that he allows his personal life to cloud his judgment on set) and, finally, becomes the 'star' in his own crime drama! The device of showing the protagonists watching such established classics as THE LADY EVE (1941), THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) and THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) on TV comes off as rather heavy-handed – though, by a stretch, one could assume that the idea was to subtly mirror the film's own themes of role-playing, disenchantment and mortality respectively! Also, while it maintains an unhurried pace, ROAD TO NOWHERE is marked by sudden moments of violence – apart from the climactic confrontation that escalates into a shoot-out, the image early on of a plane coming into frame to crash at sea is most memorable. Interestingly, we get two set of credits here – one for the film itself (at the very end) and the other (actually the opening credits) for the one it is about, with which it just happens to share the title! In fact, the very first shot has a DVD-R of the film-within-the-film being loaded in a lap-top: given that it is recorded on the notoriously unreliable Memorex brand, I wonder whether this was an in-joke by which Hellman is telling us not to trust what comes afterwards...

Karaoke-2 Opening medium shot: Shannyn Sossamon is sitting on a bed with her back to the headboard.The camera begins to move s-l-o-w-l-y toward a closeup of her face against a backdrop of silence. 3 minutes elapse as we watch her left hand move toward her face. She is holding a hair dryer. She turns it on. It blows in her face. During the next 2-3 minutes we watch as she moves the hair dryer closer to her face. We hear the motor purr. As this soporific scene concludes it sets the stage for a 120+ minute film that defies description. We soon learn that the story is about the shooting of a movie. Mademoiselle Sossamon has been chosen for the lead in this 'movie within a movie' She tells the Director she is 'not an actress' but he wants her anyway. I don't blame him..she's gorgeous and mysterious, perfect for a part that is the centerpiece of this convoluted, incomprehensible, maddening movie. As we watch various scenes of the director 'shooting his movie,' we become more confused regarding the storyline. When the director needs a retake, we watch him shoot the same scene over three times. More than likely the film editor went mad attempting to splice the scenes together to make a coherent story. Rather than give up, he spliced the scenes at random, collected his check and vanished. I commend him for having the courage to allow his name be listed in the credits. This movie was an endurance test. After the first 30 minutes, I took a bathroom break and noticed that at least half the audience had left, presumably in time to get their money back. I am aware there is an audience for this type of movie who enjoy obscure plots populated with ill defined characters. I'll acknowledge that Director Monte Hellman has style, but I'm unable to describe it. If money is not an object, go see this movie. But don't delay. I suspect the DVD is imminent.