Road Movie

The drive-in's redneck trucker genre gets the art house treatment in this intense, grungy 70's obscurity. Two novice independent truck drivers pick up the wrong passenger. Surreal, somewhat supernatural and soaking in sexual politics that are definitely up for heated debate. There's a lot going on here, especially with it's subtle depiction of independent business vs. corporate giants and unions. This is independent film as it was and should be. Essential.

What an amazing picture. America the bleak, the picture shows what too many Americans are forced to look at: shooting flames of 100 foot pilot lights at the Jersey oil refineries, filthy, trash strewn barriers and streets, swampy landfills, miles of destroyed land strip mined, dump yards, and all vision encompassing, tacky billboards luring us to destinations like the "Monkey Snake Farm"

Playing into the visual aspect are other touches such as the radio playing advertisements for items like the "writhing, bleeding Jesus statute for two dollars - . . . with genuine simulated blood." Here is a picture of an America too many see, yet too few admit exists.

The young (almost unrecognizable) Barry Bostwick gives an astonishing performance is amazing as Hank, a young idealistic country boy truck driver partnered with Robert Drivas wondrously hardworn, (yet unwittingly naïve) Gil. Regina Baff is nothing but bad news as the mistake in the form of a whore they pick up causing their string of bad luck yet making herself necessary as their only means of redemption. That Hank recognizes this early on and the "older, wiser" Gil does not gives an interesting, unspoken and uneven balance and reversal of their roles in this partnership. Ms. Baff teeters gloriously between laughably horrible and dead on, offering a frightening character study that is at once loathsome and pitiable

The soundtrack matches perfectly the visual images we are given throughout - songs and sounds of the time in which the story takes place and intertwine in a manner that seems to be an actual commentary - a necessary appendage of the story.

Such movies need the balance of tension and release to make their point, but Road Movie never offers that - giving instead a sense of tension and false-release which intensifies every frame as few films can do today.

With a handful of dollars, cast and crew of Road Movie give us a real movie, entertaining, heartbreaking and full of false hope. Astonishing achievement.

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On the surface there's not much to "Road Movie". Two loser truck drivers pick up a lot lizard and that's where the fun begins. The girl has gangster ties and ends up getting the boys into a lot of trouble...

But the intense mood of this gritty film marks it as different from the rest of the pack. I still think it's one of the most realistic films ever made. There's very few light-hearted scenes and the movie borders on claustrophobic; though the scenery is ever-changing you're drawn into the world inside the truck- everything else is just an obstacle in the way of making a dollar.

As a Class A driver I recommend this film as almost required viewing for anyone planning on getting into the world of trucking. For anyone that thinks life on the road is more like "Smokey and the Bandit" then watch this film. Though some minor things have changed since then a great majority of what still goes on is exactly like it's depicted in the film.

This is one of those films that you watch every five or ten years. Any more then that would probably make you hate it (the sheer bleakness of the picture leaves you little alternative). But once you do see it, you'll never forget it.

Occupying that particular niche where the grindhouse and the art-house overlap and sharing an ambiguous air of the American dream turned South with such distinctly 70's underground classics like TWO-LANE BLACKTOP and VANISHING POINT, ROAD MOVIE, although far from a rousing success even as a cult exploitation movie, its obscure, almost forgotten, status fully justified, enhanced by haphazard directing and storytelling deficiencies of all calibre, is a peculiar beast: moody and evocative enough to dismiss as without merits, but too technically challenged to ever come into its own or become visceral or absorbing enough to make its roughshod nature work in its favour.

The story of two independent truck drivers making their way to Chicago to deliver a meat cargo who pick up on their way a whore all out of luck plays second fiddle to the moody portrait of the squalid underbelly of 70's industrial America captured through grainy guerilla tactics. Huge factories smoking in the distance, old iron barrels rusting away in garbage heaps, derelict warehouses, small, nameless towns and cheap motels - all captured from the windows of a moving truck give to the movie a raw, bleak atmosphere that ends up being its strongest point. The director tries for something 'artsier', and while he's no Werner Herzog and the movie is no STROSZEK, the found locations in all their seemy glory enhance an otherwise lackluster film.

What should i say about this movie. Overall it's a good movie. The actors are doing a great job and the story is interesting. Two hardworking men, working as independent truckdrivers picks up a prostitute on their journey to Chicago. The movie is about what happens during that trip. The movie is an adventure, a dramatic roadmovie sort to say and the director is very good mixing the elements of exploitation and art and does it in a very talented way. And i think those last elements makes the movie a bit unique. But i think the end of the movie is the weak part. I think it's a bit over-dramatic and can't figure out why things needed to end the way it did in the absolute finale. Just when you thought things was gonna calm down a bit and the situation would get solved, that "thing" suddenly occurred that made it even worse (a bit illogic in my opinion but what the heck). i grade it only 6/10 cause of that (Not that bad grade anyway).