Road Kill

reviewed by Bryan McFadden The true strength of this film lies in its clearly defined and original characters. The film has a clear sense of direction and the motivaltional complexity of Blue's character is an asset rather than a liability. Jennifer Rubin gives a powerful performance as Blue, a killer who does not take herself too seriously, but suffers from deep childhood trauma. Rubin plays the character with a careful balance between passionate intensity and lighthearted humanity. As a result, Blue is an easily believable character who elicts the sympathy and respect of the audience. This film is rich with entertaining allusion, notably the refence to the nose bandage in Chinatown. A truly wonderful film.

Writer director Leutwyler has a unique idea here but he doesn't know if wanted to do a comedy or a drama. Alex, Palladino, is a film student getting tuition money from a local loan shark, Mr. Z. It seems his films all bear a striking resemblance to bad imitations of Jackie Chan's martial art works and his professor is threatening to end his college career unless he can come up with something original and Mr. Z is threatening him with more unless he can make his payments.

Well, his new neighbor, Blue, Jennifer Rubin, turns out to be a hired killer who wants to get out of the business after one last job. Bingo, he gets the idea of making a documentary film about her career and last job. Naturally she goes along with the idea and Alex's roommate, Lars, goes along as his sound assistant. Sort of a combo "The Whole Nine Yards" and "Three for the Road"?

But what we now have is a poorly shot and boring Los Angeles to Miami road trip with Blue bearing her soul and Lars killing any humor with poor sight jokes about his lactose intolerance.

If that isn't bad enough we have a stop over on the way home so that Blue can get revenge on her pedohilic step father and Alex can fight over the moral dilemma of having filmed a paid killer in action.

Rubin, a genuinely attractive woman and underrated actress is wasted in this mess and Palladino, who shows some comedic ability, is as confused as the writer/director is. Anthony Denison has a few funny scenes as the polite, art loving loan shark but this is the kind of movie that should have been given a D by any honest Professor of Film.

It was rated Youth Restricted at Blockbuster, but there's NO NUDITY!!!! It was ok for an indy film if you like the LA movie sceen, but I was expecting naked chicks, what a let down!!! I guess thats blockbusters fault for a misleading rating. Overall it had ok acting, but not a very unique plot, for some reason all young writers write movies about people in LA trying to write movies. huh

Truly awful movie made on a shoestring budget with some bad acting and pathetic plot about a hit-woman who gets followed around by some young geeks who want to film her bumping people off. The lovely Jennifer Rubin does not even have any nude scenes to keep anyone even remotely interested. thank god it's a short movie so the waste of your time doesn't seem to gone on forever. Jennifer has made several other higher quality movies such as "bitter harvest" "delusion" and "the fear inside". This movie has nobody else you will recognize because i'm sure most of the actors got paid "scale" wages as i doubt they spent more than 100K to make this gem.

Jennifer Rubin is one of the actresses everyone has seen. In this she shows she can really act. The plot is realatively simple: a failing film student must make one good film to graduate. He meets his next door neighbor who turns out to be a hit woman. (Rubin) Hey, here's an idea: let's make a documentary of your next hit.

And that's what they set out to do. Film her next "road" "kill".

This is not a trashy film. It's well done. Entertaining. Often funny. A coming of age in extreme circumstances film.

Consider that this independent film, with a too cute title, ends up with a rating above 7.0 on IMDb. If you can find the DVD it's well worth your invested time.

And Jennifer can act!