The Road Movie

The entertainment value of "The Road" movie is quite high but do I need to see it in the cinema? The idea of "The Road Movie" sounds witty but can it live up to it? Not at all! These videos where just in a random order. I expected them to be a bit categorized or even arranged to a story (?). The randomness of it all was disappointing and I felt that I could watch the same thing at youtube (Russian Dashcam Compilation). Some scenes relied only on dialogues and they weren't even subtitled. It had some interesting moments when we watch a car crash happening and >10 people just stop their car, step outside, watch the wrecks, smoke and talk..It felt like a mirror being holded up and we even spent money to see the accidents! I had a good time seeing this and you will have too if the movie theater is crowded and the night is in full swing.

After sleeping on it (writing review one day later), The Road Movie might not work as your traditional story-driven movie, but it may be in 2018 (this edited together in 2016) we need to change how we see movies anyway. In this case, we have what is like live-action cut scenes from a non-plot driven Russian Grand Theft Auto video game. There are no real rules in Russia on the roads by the look of it (perhaps the dash cams are to assist in that the cops make our corrupt cops look like boy/girl scouts).

People get out of cars and into fights; sometimes a car just goes off road into a river for a river-car ride; a car just crashes head on into another and we hear the couple of people saying where they're broken; a guy gets on top of a woman's car as she us parked, and he acts like a mad primate as she drives and is hysterical (he may just be deaf); trucks crash and flip; cows get hit and go on their way; the word 'f**k' is used so often in 67 minutes I think this out-f***s the 3 hour Scorsese crime epics.

The appeal in other words is to be a full witness to the insanity, and while these are taken from YouTube uploads, I think placing then in a short, to the point cinematic context is a nice radical act. It's found-footage when it comes down to it, and at the same time the tone is like taking all of the gnarly bits from Godard's apocalyptic Weekend and none if the political stuff. Human nature in Russia is brutal, unforgiving, and howlingly funny in these videos. At one point a car drives right on through a forest fire (!) that is happening on either side of the road on one hand, and on another a car chases a running bear and all the driver can think to say is to laugh at the bear's defecating. And is that a comet falling to Earth?

In other words, The Road Movie may or may not appeal to you, and I wonder what rewatchability it will have - unlike the insanity of the Jackass films, as one more comparison, there aren't any personalities to latch on to as we are Rear Window-ing as the passengers if these literal car wrecks - but it's a total blast from start to finish and a unique piece of cinema in this decade.

This could have been titled, " A slice of life on the Russian road."

Why did the woman at the gas station use an open flame to check the fuel level on the car's gas tank? (And did she survivie?)

Did the guy who speed up when the instructor say "brake" do it intentionally?

Did the cops ever catch the guy in the red car?

Was the duck tasty?

Do bears s**t on the road? (Here the answer is yes, for sure.)

Will Dasha and Pasha end up in a loving and eventful relationship? (I sure hope so. They were perfect for each other.)

Questions we'll never know the answer to -- and hoping for a "The Road Movie" sequel.

"The Road Movie" (NR, 1:07) is a documentary from Belarus and is unlike any doc you've ever seen. It's short for a feature-length film and it has no narration or graphics (except for some words and numbers that appear on the screen), which makes this movie a documentary in the purest sense of the word. It documents. Period. Even more unusual is WHAT it documents - the strange things that happen on the roads of Russia and other former Soviet Republics. That's right, it's a movie made up of dashcam videos.

But it's much more than just a series of spectacular vehicle crashes (even though there are plenty of those). These videos span 2011-2016 (based on the dates on the outer edges of the clips) and they let us see and hear shocking, humorous and bewildering things that happen in the car, to the car and outside of the car - and quite the variety it is - and almost all from the cars of ordinary, everyday people. Throughout the movie, there are the aforementioned crashes - and horrible driving conditions - from fire to ice and everything in between. From a couple different angles, we see a streak of light in the sky. (Is it a meteor? Is it a plane crash? Is it a UFO? We hear drivers and passengers discussing it, but they never find out. And neither do we.) There's a police chase through the streets of Moscow - with an unidentified vehicle heading straight for St. Peter's Square (one of the few sequences from police cars).

And the videos include plenty of clips of people behaving oddly, comically and inexplicably: An apparently mentally ill person jumps on the hood of a car and starts screaming at the windshield. A barefoot young woman who is crying appears out of nowhere, sits on the hood of a car for a moment, and then walks over the top of it. A driver who is apparently upset at the driver with the dashcam comes after that driver with an axe - and then things really get serious. Another driver and his passenger negotiate terms with an unseen prostitute (audio only, but subtitled for non-Russian audiences).

It's all shot from the (usually) stationary, but unflinching perspective of the dashcam (like when a thief grabs one of the cameras and runs off with it - with the owner in hot pursuit). "The Road Movie" is skillfully edited voyeuristic pleasure. It's often surprising, sometimes funny, occasionally frightening and always interesting. Like observing a car crash, police chase or another person even crazier than you, you just can't look away. This film allows us to indulge in some good old-fashioned rubber-necking, in many different situations and without the fear of getting into an accident ourselves or being judged by others - unless of course, they see you watching the movie, but then, they are too! This film is not winning any Oscars, but it does provide a guilty pleasure for those of us who THINK that where WE drive is crazy! "B"

Taking a cue from the overabundance of dashcams available to the public in Russian this compilation film highlights the odd, the bizarre, the troubling and nature's extremes in a fun albeit tedious nature.

Some clips make the viewer gasp, whereas others make the viewer appreciate their non-Russian heritage. Fun to watch for a bit, but over the course of the film you find yourself wishing you had a remote to fast-forward clips and rewind others.

Good for something to put on in the background at a get-together that will eventually stir a conversation, but not something to waste precious time watching alone.