Road of No Return

"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.

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.

I saw a reasonable review for this movie and this combined with two well known actors persuaded me to give it a chance. Bad mistake, the characters were paper thin, the action was boring and badly executed, and the plot/script was very weak.

Caradine and Madsen were not the main characters (from length of time on the screen anyway) and so the film didn't really benefit greatly from their presence. I wasn't expecting a dumb action movie but that would have been preferable to what I did see, which was mostly dull and uninspired.

There were several attempts at comedy in the movie that I thought just didn't work very well. When I see Indie films they are quite often hit or miss and I often love or hate them, this one I just didn't like much. As a final thought, I think someone likened this film to Pulp Fiction but while there may have been some vague attempt at copying that style, sadly it falls far, far, far short of that movie.

This movie was a disappointment to watch as it had a poorly written script and the acting was average at best despite several well known actors. The cinematography and special effects were however mostly good.

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.