Angie

...could have been really good. The acting seemed a little stiff and almost like the actors were a bit bored. I have seen all the main actors in other movies and in those, they were great. This movie brought up some good ideas but they were either never developed further (so, why raise them in the first place) or they were not resolved. And, there were a few instances where I was a bit confused as to how that situation came about, although, I figured it out fairly quickly. There are much worse movies showing on "mainstream" circuit. It was also pleasant to watch a movie with no violence, gore, swearing etc. With a bit more story development and more convincing acting, wow, what a wonderful movie this could have been. So, overall, not bad.

My cable blurb for this film listed Juliette Lewis first, then Camille, then described the story in just One sentence. I've enjoyed Lewis a lot in the past, so I viewed the film. But that one sentence blurb was about the right length! I don't want to blame the actors, but the director and writer? Probably. The characters' "character" were mostly hidden: by flashbacks out of context, or by brief sentences or silence in response to direct questions. The dialogue itself may well have been too cryptic to even give the actors insights into their part. Seemed they still had little to show us about their characters in non-verbal ways. When actors don't "get" their character, certainly the director must fill in gaps left by the writer. The feeling I got (& this isn't a verdict, just a description of what scenes "felt like") was that some actors' insights here, maybe weren't heard, or were passed over, by the director. I kept my ears and eyes open for gut level insights, 'cuz the dialogue was empty. When people try to hide something, they may fib but even those untruths can offer viewers some insight into what the character is feeling. Not here, only that they didn't want to talk, or they felt uncomfortable (about good things or bad). Lewis' late scene with Egglesfield's "David" was a bit different, but when everything "Jill" said was nasty, David's verbal response was in disgust, but his behavior wasn't. His character seemed vacuous for not just leaving the cafe - the table seemed empty, and Jill was not "helping". Visually too, like in the cloaked flashbacks, viewers were given little help in several (many?) scenes, like Angie & David sitting inside the trailer, the camera is bouncing around. I'm listening to them talk, and the bouncing is just a distraction. It's almost like the photographer saw too little evidence of the tension in the actor's behavior, or in their words; and so decided to move the camera, at least to supply evidence of some inner struggles in these two friends. If the trailer had at least been in motion, I could have stayed in tune to the dialogue, having seen that the road was bumpy (literally and figuratively). Most of us (the viewers and the makers of the film) know more about the feelings prompted by some situations in this plot, but a better review here, may be implying a reviewer has inserted his/her own experiences into this story; filled it out. I think that viewers can plant more insights into this film, than the film can drop into the viewer.

except Andy Garcia which is one of my favorite actors of all time,all the actors were terribly bad... the acting was that bad sometimes i thought i'm watching porn.. fake reactions fake laughs and all the fake acts was really really annoying and i just can blame the director because i saw Camilla Belle in good movies that she did well in them or Juliette Lewis has done some very good acting in some movies.. but they were awfully fake in this movie.. the only thing kept me somehow enthusiastic was the writing in some point and some good dialogs and the whole indie mellow theme of the movie which i liked the most about the movie..

Clearly soap opera quality but good acting on the part of Camille Belle makes it worth watching.

The beginning of OPEN ROAD is highly suggestive, with director Marco Garcia depicting different moments in Angie's (Camilla Belle's) life, as she works as a server, travels along a lonely road, and tries to communicate with her mother back in Brazil. It's clear she's got something to hide, but we have no idea what; all we know is that she is a talented artist, who translates all her emotional pain into her paintings. So far so good; but then the film experiences a failure of nerve and transforms itself into a familiar tale of self-discovery. Angie meets nice boyfriend (Colin Egglesfield), and his skeptical cousin (Juliette Lewis), leaves her boyfriend in the lurch as she goes off on the road, and discovers at the end of the film that her friend Chuck (Andy Garcia) - whom she encountered at her lowest point during her journey - has a dark secret directly relating to her own life. At times the script veers towards the banal, and although the film is well photographed, with several aerial shots of the rolling landscape with Angie's car just a speck on the horizon, one cannot help but feel that director Garcia could have done far more with the material.