Road to Nowhere (2010)

A young filmmaker gets wrapped up in a crime while shooting his new project on location.

Director:

Monte Hellman

Writer:

Steven Gaydos

Stars:

Tygh Runyan, Dominique Swain, Shannyn Sossamon

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Tygh Runyan	...	Mitchell Haven
Dominique Swain	...	Nathalie Post
Shannyn Sossamon	...	Laurel Graham / Velma Duran
John Diehl	...	Bobby Billings
Cliff De Young	...	Cary Stewart / Rafe Taschen
Waylon Payne	...	Bruno Brotherton
Rob Kolar	...	Steve Gales (as Robert Kolar)
Nic Paul	...	Johnny Laidlaw
Fabio Testi	...	Nestor Duran
Fabio Tricamo	...	Desk Clerk
Moxie	...	Self
Peter Bart	...	Self
Pete Manos	...	El Cholo Bartender
Mallory Culbert	...	Mallory
Beck Latimore	...	Doc Holliday Bartender

Storyline

There's a murky tenuous balance between reality and fiction; particularly when it involves a beautiful young woman, murder, a powerful politico, a missing fortune and suicide. A passionate filmmaker creating a film based upon a true crime casts an unknown mysterious young woman bearing a disturbing resemblance to the femme fatale in the story. Unsuspectingly, he finds himself drawn into a complex web of haunting intrigue, obsessed with the woman, the crime, her possibly notorious past and the disturbing complexity between art and truth. From the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to Verona, Rome and London, new truths are revealed and clues to other crimes and passions, darker and even more complex are uncovered.

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Plot Keywords:

filmmaker | passion | murder | hairy chest | bare chested male | 

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Taglines:

Illusion is the first of all pleasures

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Genres:

Romance | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some language and brief violence

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film was shot on a Canon 5D.

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Connections

Features The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

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Soundtracks

Road to Nowhere
Written and performed by Tom Russell (As Thomas George Russell)
Frontera Music ASCAP
Administered by Bug Music

User Reviews

One-Lane Blacktop

This was among the most exciting news in recent years, a new Monte Hellman film out of nowhere. In the pipeline for some time but released without any hooplah or major headlines, this much was at least proper for a man who made incognito some of the unique films of the American underground: Ride in the Whirlwind, The Shooting, Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter.

But this one intrigued in a different way; gone but always remembered is the great Warren Oates, gone the mute drifters and brooding alienation of that time, but it would not be hackwork for hire, a re-shoot or mere work assignment, this one promised to be a dark personal vision like he hadn't been given the opportunity to direct in a long time.

So gone is Blacktop and Oates, this is a new thing for Hellman. But old in terms of cinema. It is the old trope of a film about a film, filtered through film noir and French New Wave. Lynch, pundits assert.

So one layer is a film about the makings of the film we are watching, referencing a life in movies and around movie sets that Hellman knows too well. Material deliberately chosen to be pulpy and reflecting movie plots that we know from noir is the backbone, a story of illicit love and suicide and behind it political intrigue and stolen money, presumably real events that our visionary filmmaker is fighting to turn into a movie.

Another layer is that story interspersed throughout as a film-within and gradually being shaped into the film being shot. But is it? Or is something more sinister afoot and only masquerading as our film? The idea: where does one dream end and the next begin, and is the space where one bleeds into the other reality or fiction.

The mechanisms that generate images are well sketched: desire, codified as our actress and referencing the femme fatale - another woman playing a role - and film noir dynamics, and the self perceiving itself separate, here very directly our filmmaker selectively framing a part of real life as a moving illusion.

The downside is not that it's slow and muddled as reported by some viewers. The downside is that since Hellman's day we've had several filmmakers probe and abstract deeper. We've had Lynch. This is not as complex or dangerous as believes to be. The machinery is never less than obvious. And occasionally as hamfisted as a camera being mistaken by police for a gun.

Hellman shoots this like it's going to be his crowning achievement. It's not, mostly because in this specific niche compete the most adventurous filmmakers of our time. This is not and has never been Hellman's natural space. He can't help but disappoint. But it's a new Hellman film and in a new direction and that's something to get excited for these days, right?

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [Japan]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

7 April 2011 (Portugal)

Also Known As:

Caminho para o Nada

Filming Locations:

Italy

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$2,521, 12 June 2011

Gross USA:

$40,294

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$161,619

Company Credits

Production Co:

Tigers Den Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

121 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1