Road of No Return (2009) Reviews

• Why Cheap Political Statements and Movies Don't Mix…

  Anonymous_Maxine2009-03-06

  Road of No Return is notable more than anything else for having signs of a great cast despite a pathetically awful script. The movie poster has some promise, with Michael Madsen and David Carradine posing opposite each other in a picture that seems to promise a gritty and powerful action drama, but such is not to be the case. This thing is so bad that it's amazing that it ever got made at all, much less that stars of such caliber as Madsen and Carradine signed on. The story concerns a group of hit men who have been hired by a group of shady businessmen. The hit men are all interchangeable caricatures, paper-thin stereotypes that are thrown together and spend the majority of the movie in close quarters getting to know each other and sharing their feelings. Soon it is revealed that the men that hired them are government officials who are forced to fly under the radar to take out some major drug dealers because those pesky liberal laws prevent them from really being able to do their jobs. The fact that the movie is based on a government agency that has to hide their dealings from Washington in order to avoid getting in trouble for doing their jobs does not speak well for the coherence of the script, since at one point David Carradine's character explains that Washington has authorized them to use "extreme measures" against drug traffickers. Complicating matters is the fact that the hired hit men noted one of their license plates during the hiring process and are looking into the backgrounds of their employers. A bunch of nonsense follows and ultimately everyone is put into a position where the hit men want to get paid and the men that hired them decide that the only way they can safely get out of the whole thing is to kill all of them. Clean the cleaners, as it were. Oh, and did I mention the kids? Early in the film, two of the hit men pull off a multiple homicide which leaves two young girls stranded and with nowhere to go, so the hit men take them in and take turns being bizarre father figures for them. I love the thought that went into this. The girls were at one point about to be sold into sexual slavery by the bad guys, but the good bad guys take them in. One of the girls is killed (or taken away or something, I can't remember and don't care to go back and find out), leaving only one of them, a young girl of about ten years old. Here's a little exchange that should reveal something about the kind of script that this movie comes from. One day, she's relaxing in a hotel room with two of the hit men, and one of them leans over and starts doing lines of cocaine off the bedside table. When the girl gets upset, he sits up, concerned, and asks, "What's the matter?" He seems genuinely confused. The end credits of Road of No Return inform us that the movie is written and directed by "Dr." Parviz Saghizadeh. I have no idea what kind of doctor this person is, but I can tell you that it is not a doctor of philosophy, otherwise he would have noticed the pathetic shallowness of the political nonsense that this movie tries to pass on. David Carradine's character ham-handedly delivers it in this charming bit of dialogue: "How the hell did we get into this mess anyhow? It's those damn liberals. If we had tough laws and tough judges with balls enough to put these drug traffickers behind bars and throw away the keys…" So you see, it's all the liberals' fault that they were forced to hire hit men and that those poor kids got blown up in that car bomb and that the girls had no parents and were going to be sold into child prostitution and the whole world is just coming apart. I have a question though, who's fault is it that this mess of a movie got made?

• A thinking man's action film

  paulphoto2010-02-28

  I liked this film not b/c it had spectacular action sequences but b/c it was a thinking man's action film, it had heart, it had characters that had a past and had something to say. You don't usually see that with Hollywood films in particular action films. So it was quite refreshing specially that you don't expect it. But I must say that I was a bit disappointed that Carradine and Madsen's time on screen was limited but I think others did a really good job carrying the film. However, the production value at times was weak, you could see that it had been made on a shoe-string budget. It was definitely an indie film and it showed but I like low budget indie films. The film worked for me and left an impression. If you don't like dialog this film is not for you.

• Unwatchable past the first 15 minutes

  killbot10102009-07-12

  First off, the characters in this movie made me laugh. A black guy that holds his gun sideways and somewhat dresses like shaft, a redneck Nazi from NJ (huh?!), an Arabic guy, and a native American hit-man. only one believable was the Arabic guy. Everybody else were clowns. especially the white guy. Not to mention all of these guys are suppose to be "professionals". who the hell holds a gun sideways, then shoots different later on in the movie?? The story has holes and seemed to be written by a 16 year old kid. The acting was horrible along with the camera work. I Just couldn't bring myself to watch anymore of the movie after 15-20 Min's so I turned it off. Amateur film makers should learn from this movie and see what NOT to do.

• Crap!

  iaxlist2010-02-07

  This movie is terrible, the negative reviews are spot on. Unbelievable characters and a stupid story. Even if the DEA could hire hit men that would kill every single drug dealer in the country, there is no way they would do it. They would be destroying their own jobs. Also, what was up with kids? Unless its going to be super awesome most child actors suck. One weird thing, all the people who gave this a positive review have all only reviewed one other movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. That seems sort of suspect to me. What are the odds...

• A Peculiar Disappointment

  maxtrack2010-10-30

  Where to begin, there were so many problems with this movie. The written dialogue was often weak filler and the delivery was frequently unnatural. Almost as if the moments where the actors were exploring how to deliver the dialogue were captured and used to create the movie. At times there was dialogue when it wasn't needed. Generally, a movie is good if the audience is not "aware" they are watching a movie. Thus when something in a movie forces the viewer to stop watching and think, it isn't a good movie. At one point in this film a character commits an action they regret right away, yet their dialogue states they didn't know *something* before they committed the action. However the character should still not know the *something*, yet they are lamenting what they have done because of the effect on *something*, which is unknown to them. Like a chunk of the movie is missing to explain what was going on, but actually it was just poorly written, in my estimation. The big name actors both seem to be having a bad day on set, for almost the entire film. Michael Madsen & David Carradine are so very good in Kill Bill (1&2) yet somehow it seems they made no effort in Road of No Return. It is as if we are watching two actors who just happen to look like Madsen and Carradine, but lack their talent. Maybe they just could not get into their roles, perhaps the characters felt too similar to the characters they portrayed in Kill Bill. Over acting and under acting were not the only weaknesses. The framing, lighting and dead end quality of some scenes creates an ongoing internal dialogue in the viewer. The voice in the mind of the audience is often saying things like: "Why did they shoot that scene in such a strange way?" "What was the value of that line of dialogue?" "Is this supposed to be a comedy?" "Why are the only good scenes the ones where someone is talking to the child actor?" "Is this whole movie a bizarre parody of a movie?" "Am I on candid camera as I watch this movie?" The special effects are so lame the are almost non existent. With so much gun fire I was left wondering why there were so many poorly produced effects connected to gun fire? Less gun fire done well would have been a better idea. Conceptually, the story line worked well, it was just the execution that sucked. (pardon the pun) In fact, the only reason I kept watching was to see how the story line played out. Were the actors that bad or was there something else going on which caused this production to turn into card board cut out characters? I'm still not certain, but it felt like something was restricting all of the performances as they could not have all been uniformly bad actors. In the end, this is a great movie for use in learning how NOT to shoot a movie.