Good movie but grossly overrated

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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.

A really bad movie trying to be existential and thought provoking, with supposed stylish scenes, that starts and ends up being just a confusing, intentionally unintelligible borefest.First we watch a riveting four minute scene with a woman blowing a hairdryer on her face for some reason. Pretty girl, but please. I guess the director thinks that some people when they are pondering their lives or a dilemma break out the hairdryer. Shots ring out later for reasons that are never fully shown or explained. I will tell you why, but there are now SPOILERS AHEAD.There begins some type of cover up for a crime, that ends up actually being a movie of the cover up of the crime that ends up being a movie of a movie of the cover up of the crime, or maybe not, that ends up being an entirely new crime, but wait.....it is a now a movie of that crime, but that ends up being a filming of the story of that crime, or maybe not......who knows? I am sure this all has some deep meaning to the director, and shadows his personal life or something, but to normal people, no meaning at all. Worse, it is stunningly slow and boring. If you find the above premise intriguing, I would suggest someone could have made a movie like that that would be infinitely more interesting and yet still be confusing and thought provoking. Like maybe Inception or numerous other movies.I think the movie is summed up by its title, but even more to the point, a line within the movie itself (or within one of the movies of the movies...): " Let's f--- the facts" OK cut....lets look over this review and see if it reads well.... OK CUT.......THATS A WRAP OF THIS REVIEW..........

In Monte Hellman's first feature in 21 years, 'Road to Nowhere' (based on a script from Steven Gaydos), the director weaves together three separate story lines including the making of a film, the film that is being made, and the mystery on which the movie that is being made is based. A double suicide in Bryson County, North Carolina involving a local politician and a Cuban refugee ends up costing the state $100 million. Shortly thereafter director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan) is making a film based on the event as reported on Natalie Post's (Dominique Swain) blog. The film production begins to unravel when the director becomes involved with the unknown actress, Laurel Graham (Shannyn Sossamon), stirring up jealousy and in-fighting among the cast and crew. Matters are not helped when the film's regional consultant, and former insurance investigator, Bruno Brotherton (Waylon Payne), begins to suspect the actress Laurel Graham of being involved in the actual scandal. As the movie unfolds, the plot threads become an insular maze of self-reference gloriously leading nowhere.The title, 'Road to Nowhere,' can apply to any number of Hellman's previous works whether in reference to a pass through the Filipino jungle leading to an enemy camp ('Back Door to Hell'), a trail to Kingsley through terrain so barren it looks like a science-fiction landscape rather than the Utah desert ('The Shooting'), or a cross-country race that loses sight of finish line ('Two-Lane Blacktop'). Furthermore, considering the etymological relationship between the words nowhere and utopia, the title can additionally describe the Quixotic quests of the lead characters in 'Cockfighter' and especially 'Iguana.' I'm glad to see that Monte Hellman is directing again and I can't wait to see where this Road to Nowhere takes him next...because just 'cuz you're heading nowhere doesn't mean you can't make some great stops along the way.

ROAD TO NOWHERE is Monte Hellman's first feature film in over two decades and it proves to be worth the wait. An instant classic of the Movie-Movie genre, along with Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT and Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT, with strong links to Hitchcock's VERTIGO, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, RASHOMON and Jacques Rivette's L'AMOUR FOU, it's a feast for the mind, eyes and all movie lovers. And, make no mistake, ROAD TO NOWHERE is every bit as original and artistically courageous as those time tested classics.Hellman's on-again, off-again career, from Roger Corman produced horror projects like BEAST FROM THE HAUNTED CAVE, THE CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA and THE TERROR to the mind-bending, low budget western THE SHOOTING (the first psychedelic western and a possible template for EL TOPO) to the the celebrated 1971 TWO LANE BLACKTOP, which defined the mood of its era, and its road movie twin, COCKFIGHTER, has proved as iconoclastic as his vision and his films have not had an easy time with mainstream critics of their time. But they have lasted. ROAD TO NOWHERE is his most daring, experimental and uncompromising film yet, and it will also last. It has the twists and turns of Hellman's own career story built in but it also has a universal validity in its overriding concern with the nature of Art and the role of the Artist. The nonlinear, mind teasing structure is both a challenge and a gift for those who want to engage with a film on a creative level. It tells either multiple stories or presents multiple takes on one story: the fallout from a film being made about a shady politician, a femme fatale, murder, suicide and possible resurrection. The director becomes obsessed with his leading actress in the manner of a New Hollywood predator on a sophisticated prowl, but there's a supremely nasty surprise in store for him and for our conventional expectations as consumers of the genre. The mind can play funny tricks when sex, money and artistic ambition are in the brew.RTN starts out as a crime film, a 21st Century Film Noir in which an obsession with cinema determines the fate of the fall guy. Mitchell Haven, the director of the film within the film, appreciates THE SEVENTH SEAL and THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (clips of both are included in key scenes) as masterpieces in the manner of the real Monte Hellman, but Haven can't see what's unfolding right there in front of him, sometimes in his own bed. It questions our assumptions about the reality of everyday experience, the realities of the creative process and the reality we assign to the images we absorb from cinema. There is no set reality in RTN, this is a metaphysical thriller, which contains elements of the meta-fictions of Borges, atmospherically shot in North Carolina's ethereal Smoky Mountains. You won't be able to predict what's coming down in the next scene and, like Edgar G. Ulmer's noir classic DETOUR, only endless movement, existential anxiety and unpleasant change are certain.If ROAD TO NOWHERE isn't a masterpiece, it's certainly the work of an American Master. It could be described as a haunted, haunting cautionary fable on what happens to people who watch too many movies. In our age of the Blogger and instant Internet searches it also evokes the irony of John Ford's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, in which the editor concludes, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Each image in RTN has an uncanny, minatory quality, sometimes luminous, sometimes dark, which suck one into the netherworld. It's beautiful, spare, mysterious, tragic and often possessed of a jet black humor. It could be described as a Country and Western Art film, the evil twin of COCKFIGHTER, another Hellman internal/external trek. Monte Hellman dares to allow the viewer space for creative collaboration. This is, perhaps, his authorial signature.ROAD TO NOWHERE won't reveal itself on one viewing, it immediately seduces you but insists you come back for revisits. Like any memorable work of art it respects your intelligence and rewards your patience in spades.