End of the Road

Another example of a need to churn out films at a fast rate for an eager audience. Netflix is rushing out way too many films and risking the reputations of actors by doing so.

The lead actors must have been quite misguided to take this project as they are way better than the resulting film produced here. A mishmash of a road trip type movie we've all seen before but redone in a shoddy way.

Not even a hint of realism as the story progresses but the writers must shoulder the blame for that and the Director surely could see what was resulting from the bad writing. Take more time on the scripts please!!!

Give it a watch if you like Queen Latifah and Ludicris but don't expect their finest work.

TRYING to disregard all the obvious social "messages" in this...

This was decent for the first half, act one. Where they are merely building characters.

Catalyst happens, act two....

If you have half a brain you INSTANTLY know who "Mr Cross" (The bad guy) is. Because of this, act two feels more like going through the motions. The repeated "mystery" behind Mr Cross is somewhat pointless because you will probably already know who it is.

The reveal, act three....

From here.. It's exceptionally fitting that Ludacris is starring in this film... because it all gets so very, very, very, ludicrous. It almost borders on an unintentional comedy. There are too many logic errors to list - wild leaps that wouldn't really be possible.

All the acting was good, the constant unnatural lighting was an odd choice... purple, orange, green, pink.... never just normal lights. Made it visually more interesting.

Overall it was an okay watch, but don't really expect too much.

Regarding the "propaganda" aspect.....

I would say the "message" here of exceptional bigotry by white characters is not really a good message for younger audiences. Portraying all white people as racist is no different than portraying all black people as pimp, hookers, or murderous drug dealers --- it's simply not true. Ya can't paint things with such a broad brush. While I don't deny bigotry exists.. I've never seen it to the extent expressed later in this film. And to be perfectly honest, I think it worked pretty well in act one of this film when it first rears its ugly head. However, all the usage after that scene was pointless and didn't add to the story in ANY way.

I honestly wonder if these films which portray such bold, in-your-face, clearly defined, racism are not teaching mechanisms for younger viewers. And while this film avoided any white character using the N word.. it got as close as possible without it. So are they somehow showing younger white viewers what's "okay" in terms of how white people think of and act towards black people?? There's no subtlety in this film, no nuance - which is most commonly what actual racism looks like today. And there are no consequences for the racism, no pushback by other white characters.... it's simply portrayed as "that's what all white people think."

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.

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.