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Friday, December 16, 2011

THE TEN BEST FILMS OF 2011     10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Road To Nowhere      6



Monte Hellman directed the ingenious noir drama "Road To Nowhere", written by Steven Gaydos. 
Monterey Media 
  

Monte Hellman
, director
Steven Gaydos, writer
2 hours 2 minutes
Rated R for some language and brief violence
(Monterey Media)
June 2011
Shannyn Sossamon, Tygh Rungan, Cliff De Young, Waylon Payne, Dominique Swain
Blu-Ray/DVD (U.S., Canada)

"This is my bullshit Hollywood movie."

by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Friday, December 16, 2011


Monte Hellman made a triumphant return to big screen feature film directing after a 21-year absence with "Road To Nowhere", the independent drama that got a very small (and fleeting) summer release.  Mr. Hellman, who directed the landmark 1971 film "Two-Lane Blacktop", brings noir back in this layered story of fact and fiction.

A political scandal in North Carolina is being made into a documentary, but are the participants actors or the actual scandal subjects?  Velma Duran (Shannyn Sossamon) is apparently a victim of murder.  Laurel Graham (also Ms. Sossamon) is an actress hired by the film's director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Rungan).  The strands of this intricate film slowly draw tighter, and Steven Gaydos executes the dimensions of these potent characters so crisply.  Owing much to "Lost Highway" and "The Lady Eve", the latter which it borrows to make a key point, "Road To Nowhere" was richly absorbing, engaging and breathtaking. 

"Road To Nowhere" is crammed with clues, many of which are only glimpsed on second or third viewing, yet is never predictable as a drama.  Lightning bolts of irony, mystery and malevolence mark this atmospheric film in which Ms. Sossamon was absolutely perfect, playing dual roles so adroitly.  Her work marked what for me was the year's best acting by a woman on screen, arguably the year's best work, male or female. 

Mr. Hellman's film is about process, the ritualizing and rote patterns of filmmaking, and in a year where moviemaking was celebrated on the big screen. "Road To Nowhere" was the most unsentimental of the film-within-a-film movies, this year, and it flaunted murder as a business as cutthroat and spontaneous as the engines of Hollywood itself.

Rule: Mr. Hellman shouldn't ever be away from feature filmmaking for so long again.

Full written review here

NEXT: NUMBER 5

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