Road of No Return

I'm also kinda surprised with the couple of five star reviews ... they truly have not judged this on peer movies that it apes or aspires towards. The film maker drove a few pegs into the wall: hire some banner actors, do some (great) static shots of desert and rail cars .... the premise had so much promise here, what could have been done. Watching the film, it was obviously a rock-bottom budget attempt at milking the Tarantino theme, and the props, stage sets and so on were just pathetic. Continuity was rank, acting was wooden at best, script was just awful ..... really, the waste of talent, manpower, money and audience loyalty was tragic. I watched to the end, and kept muttering to myself; I wish - given the great pedigrees from Madsen and Carradine - that this had been done by a real script writer and a pro director. Trust me, this film is a real stinker.

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.

I caught this movie on my tv like 30 minutes into the actual movie, I thought it was supposed to be a comedy but after looking it up I realized the movie was supposed to be a serious action/thriller. You will probably like the movie a lot more if you take it less serious, but overall it's still pretty bad. The characters I guess were trying to be interesting but overall they were just goofy. It's pretty clear this movie was trying to go for a good mix of action/comedy but they just suck at doing what they were trying to do and could not mix these two together. They were trying to do what Pulp Fiction does but did it worse on every level. Surprised I caught this movie in 2023 because it feels like something that would just be completely forgotten. Watch the movie if you like to laugh at how mediocre it is, that's about it.

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.

"Road Of No Return" was one of the last movies David Carradine made before his death. Curious about if he was still able to give an entertaining performance at this time like his past performances was one reason why I rented it. Another reason was that Michael Madsen was also in the movie. The front of the DVD box seems to suggest that they are the two lead actors in the movie, but that isn't so - they are given supporting roles. Not only that, I noticed that though they share several scenes together, not once do you see both actors at the same time. (Obviously, they were each filmed at separate times and edited together later.) And Carradine looks very old and tired in all of his scenes.

I probably could have lived with those facts had the rest of the movie been entertaining, but in actual fact there's not much entertaining here. The movie has a sense of humor that is occasionally amusing, but is mostly loud and tiresome. While the movie is decently shot on a poverty row budget, the other production values are often flawed, with stuff like one shot being repeated, stock footage, and obvious post-dubbed dialogue. But the biggest problem is that the movie eventually comes to a slow crawl, and it's tiresome making the slow slog to the end. Some more gratuitous action and pruning down of scenes would have helped considerably.