The director's first effort in 21 years shows he has lost none of his craftsmanship: the film is closest in tone to TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971) from his earlier work, in that it starts to tell a particular tale but, whilst losing sight of its objective along the way, ends up revealing the real truth underneath, as it were. Given its device of having the movie-making business serve as backdrop to a puzzle, I somehow expected this to be akin to MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) – but I am glad to report that the film very much adheres to the themes Hellman liked to explore well before David Lynch became a household word! This usually involves an odyssey where the protagonist obsesses over something or other, but the answers that he comes up with ultimately say more about himself than anything else! In addition, we have several layers of perception going on at once here: the noir-ish story itself, a film being shot based on this, the insurance investigation that might have detected links between the two, and a parallel probe by a female blogger that tries to make sense of the whole!
Though the central intrigue (incorporating pretty standard elements i.e. an embezzler, a femme fatale and the cop on their trail eventually opting for a cut of the proceeds) is rather sketchily presented, one is still engrossed enough to wish that a solution to the mystery had been provided. Indeed, the waters are further muddled towards the end by not only suggesting that it is still an ongoing plot strand but by having these characters and their movie incarnations played by the self-same actors (the scene in question, in fact, seems to have elicited sheer befuddlement from eminent movie critic Roger Ebert)! Incidentally, casting is effective all around – and especially Shannyn Sossamon's heroine – though I was only familiar with two of its members, namely Dominique Swain (as the blogger-turned-amateur-reporter, who becomes attached beyond the 'call of duty' to the insurance man) and Fabio Testi (a Hellman regular, appearing briefly in the part of the leading lady's father). The male protagonist, then, is the movie's young director – named Mitchell Haven, it is no coincidence that he shares Monte Hellman's own initials: he too begins a romance (with Sossamon), gets in too deep (so that he allows his personal life to cloud his judgment on set) and, finally, becomes the 'star' in his own crime drama!
The device of showing the protagonists watching such established classics as THE LADY EVE (1941), THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) and THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) on TV comes off as rather heavy-handed – though, by a stretch, one could assume that the idea was to subtly mirror the film's own themes of role-playing, disenchantment and mortality respectively! Also, while it maintains an unhurried pace, ROAD TO NOWHERE is marked by sudden moments of violence – apart from the climactic confrontation that escalates into a shoot-out, the image early on of a plane coming into frame to crash at sea is most memorable. Interestingly, we get two set of credits here – one for the film itself (at the very end) and the other (actually the opening credits) for the one it is about, with which it just happens to share the title! In fact, the very first shot has a DVD-R of the film-within-the-film being loaded in a lap-top: given that it is recorded on the notoriously unreliable Memorex brand, I wonder whether this was an in-joke by which Hellman is telling us not to trust what comes afterwards...
Though the central intrigue (incorporating pretty standard elements i.e. an embezzler, a femme fatale and the cop on their trail eventually opting for a cut of the proceeds) is rather sketchily presented, one is still engrossed enough to wish that a solution to the mystery had been provided. Indeed, the waters are further muddled towards the end by not only suggesting that it is still an ongoing plot strand but by having these characters and their movie incarnations played by the self-same actors (the scene in question, in fact, seems to have elicited sheer befuddlement from eminent movie critic Roger Ebert)! Incidentally, casting is effective all around – and especially Shannyn Sossamon's heroine – though I was only familiar with two of its members, namely Dominique Swain (as the blogger-turned-amateur-reporter, who becomes attached beyond the 'call of duty' to the insurance man) and Fabio Testi (a Hellman regular, appearing briefly in the part of the leading lady's father). The male protagonist, then, is the movie's young director – named Mitchell Haven, it is no coincidence that he shares Monte Hellman's own initials: he too begins a romance (with Sossamon), gets in too deep (so that he allows his personal life to cloud his judgment on set) and, finally, becomes the 'star' in his own crime drama!
The device of showing the protagonists watching such established classics as THE LADY EVE (1941), THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) and THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) on TV comes off as rather heavy-handed – though, by a stretch, one could assume that the idea was to subtly mirror the film's own themes of role-playing, disenchantment and mortality respectively! Also, while it maintains an unhurried pace, ROAD TO NOWHERE is marked by sudden moments of violence – apart from the climactic confrontation that escalates into a shoot-out, the image early on of a plane coming into frame to crash at sea is most memorable. Interestingly, we get two set of credits here – one for the film itself (at the very end) and the other (actually the opening credits) for the one it is about, with which it just happens to share the title! In fact, the very first shot has a DVD-R of the film-within-the-film being loaded in a lap-top: given that it is recorded on the notoriously unreliable Memorex brand, I wonder whether this was an in-joke by which Hellman is telling us not to trust what comes afterwards...