Fim da Estrada

After watching her deliver a descent performance in her limited role in Hustle, I had hopes from this movie which had Queen Lateefa in the lead role of a single mom on an unexpectedly dangerous road trip with her family, something that was evident in the trailer and caught viewers attention too. But then, this was the end of it.

One cannot totally blame the actors if you have a script that hasn't got enough element for a thrilling road trip (was it the budget issue or inexperienced direction, can't really say).

Yes, the suspense that unfolded mid-way was good, but once you have finished watching this movie you too would feel that it wasn't good enough to be recommended as your weekend ride.

Everything is mediocre in this movie. Script, acting, photography, director, production design, etc. Typical lefthanded copy-paste of the worst kind. And what's up with the purple lighting? Is it so not to make the movie too scary? Don't worry. There's nothing scary about this movie. The acting and how the scenes are composed together are so untrustworthy that you won't feel scared, ever! Only every two minutes you will be wondering why you are still watching?! And that's a kind of scary feeling. The producers should have taken the same actors and the same script (maybe a different director?!) and made a Comedy. That might have worked.

This reminded me of a racist cops and robbers movie from the 70's with roles of races switched to accommodate a new era in bad theater and hatefulness being sewn through scripts in Hollywood these days. The weak plot is not the biggest disappointment. It was not bad acting. It is the predictable characters and the obvious cliches. Writers tried too hard to make decent one liners. They came out poorly timed and not funny.

I think that the saving grace for this film and why I was able to give it more than one star was the young actor Shaun Dixon. He earned the other stars for my rating. He was awesome and you can tell he worked hard in the role. I look forward to seeing him in future movies.

It could have been a much better movie had it not try so hard to be racist. It was almost cartoonish. So unnecessary and unwanted in this country's current atmosphere.

Listen, I'm a big Queen Lah fan... But this movie was terrible. From the very first interaction, I knew this movie was going to be rough. Ludacris looked absolutely ridiculous and his attempt to act was 'okay' at best. The writing was so bad and the characters were completely unbelievable. It was predictable and poorly thought out. Netflix movies are getting worse and worse. They're losing their edge while trying to stay woke and relevant. It's not working. I will say a couple of the action scenes were enjoyable, but that's as good as I can get. I knew exactly what was going to happen and who the villain was within the first 20 minutes. I only watched the entire thing because Queen Latifah is one of my favorites.

There was an uneven sense of direction here; some excitement mixed with periods of lagging, almost senseless interlude that had no payoff. An initial conflict, which was given a lot of screentime, was never revisited and seemed only to serve as an "Oh, it's like that" moment - which added little to the main plot overall in my opinion. The kids were, as is often the case, unpleasant, disobedient, and bratty. Ludacris, usually fun to watch, was kind of wasted here as a lovable slack-off type. Latifah vacillated between take-charge 'equalizer' and scared victim - which I blame completely on the director, who really needed to pick a lane and tighten this actioner up. As it is, time is spent on scenes showing us hooray-for-family moments when that family should be galvanized, on the move and planning to survive.