ThiefHott Too much of everything

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

tigerfish50 As 'Road to Nowhere' begins, pre-production is underway on a movie project about a notorious murder case involving an absconded embezzler, faked accidents and substitute corpses. The director is seeking a lead actress to play the crime's femme fatale - and his search soon unearths an uncanny double of the villainous vamp, whose only previous credit is an 'exploitation' movie. Coincidentally her character is called Velma - which also happens to be the name of the duplicitous missing showgirl in Raymond Chandler's 'Farewell, My Lovely'. After two-thirds of the film is wasted on long shots of characters tying their shoelaces, watching nail polish dry and rehearsing inconsequential dialog, the actress embarks on a tepid love affair with the film's director, which results in some unexplained melodramatic discord and a violent conclusion.Although film-within-a-film concepts have been used previously, as in Truffaut's 'Day For Night' and David Lynch's 'Inland Empire', a disciplined director armed with a coherent screenplay should be able to conjure fresh life from the old dog. Unfortunately 'Road To Nowhere' never provides any useful information about the original crime or those involved, nor does it ever clarify various intrigues amongst the film crew. Director Hellman justifies all the heavy-handed movie references and opaque mysteries by claiming he prefers surreal narratives - but his excuse is fraudulent. This isn't surrealism - it's just dull story-telling - or more accurately, no story-telling.

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...

Lee Diamond Just went to the New York premiere last night..."Road to Nowhere" is artistically designed to be viewed over and over again, as the scenes will piece together like a jigsaw puzzle. Its pace has an addictive nature, much like David Lynch's "Twin Peaks", but conversely, this is perfectly cohesive thematically. It's abstract, dynamically ambitious, yet flawless in its dialogue and divine scripting. This is the best of all of Monte Hellman's films in one, covering all territory and more. Hellman pays strict attention to detail from shot to shot. All of the photography/cinematography is stylish, yet raw and uncut, giving the mood of the film a realistic look under a very experimental screenplay. The story gets complex, a movie within a movie, and sometimes you can't tell which is which as the characters blend, but there's an underlying sense of humor about it all. Scenes go dramatic to funny like you're on the set for the outtakes sometimes, and it's fascinating how the story unfolds like a who-dunnit that is totally unpredictable. Shannyn Sossamon is perfect, and so is the whole ensemble Hellman brings to the screen. Add some great Tom Russell songs and an erratic but beautiful ending, you'll need to see it again and again.Impressed to say the least, "Road to Nowhere" is as much a homage to the classics as it is the future of filmmaking.

sos12 Monte Hellman remains one of America's greatest living filmmakers, director of metaphysical classics like TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971), arguably the ultimate American Road Movie, COCKFIGHTER (1974) and a handful of others. Like the masterful Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice (whose classic THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE Hellman gives a nod to in ROAD TO NOWHERE), it's something of a crime that Hellman has directed as few films as he has. So there's great reason to celebrate with the arrival of ROAD TO NOWHERE, his first full feature in over 20 years. Hellman being who he is, ROAD TO NOWHERE is as dense, poetic and mysterious as anything he's made since probably THE SHOOTING in 1968. In fact, his new film is likely his most challenging ever -- but that shouldn't put you off. On the surface, it's the story of a real-life murder-suicide connected to a Southern politician -- a mystery which gets inextricably entangled with the making of a film about the tragedy directed by a moody, obsessive filmmaker (Tygh Runyan, who also played the moody, obsessive Stanley Kubrick in Hellman's "Stanley's Girlfriend") and starring a beautiful, opaque actress (Shannyn Sossamon, in easily her strongest and most rewarding performance to date). Add to this an almost infinite rogue's gallery of characters including veteran actors Cliff De Young and John Diehl, a wry extended cameo from Italian pulp cinema icon Fabio Testi (from Hellman's CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37) -- and you have the strangest Hall of Mirrors this side of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. If you struggle to make "sense" of the plot, you'll probably miss the point -- since one of the major themes that emerges in ROAD TO NOWHERE is the impossibility of ever making sense of anything. (Hence the title: the Road leads Nowhere, but that shouldn't stop you from taking the journey.) Hellman uses a similar narrative strategy as in his classic TWO-LANE BLACKTOP where about halfway through the story the actual race stops mattering. In ROAD TO NOWHERE, the question of who committed the murder (or whether there was a murder at all) slowly drifts away in a Sargasso Sea of false leads, flashbacks and unanswered questions. What's left is Hellman's portrait of monstrous artistic obsession and some of his most intense and erotically-charged filmmaking ever, played out in long, lingering scenes between Sossamon and Runyan. There's also a bit of M.C. Escher here, like walking up a staircase only to find yourself at the bottom of another staircase, and another ... If you're looking for an easy ride, then you should probably look elsewhere. But if you want to wander off-road, into the mysterious and inexplicable Zone (to quote from Tarkovsky's STALKER) where nothing is as it seems -- then Monte Hellman's ROAD TO NOWHERE is for you.