Search - Road Ends on DVD

Stylish but unoriginal B thriller.

Francisco Jose Marti | Lleida, Spain. | 03/11/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Recently someone said in a spanish "Twilight" TV review that film noir fanatics don't only love cliches, they also demand them. This B movie is a good example. There is absolutely nothing in this movie we haven't seen a thousand times before: the story of a man with misterious past that comes to a small village and changes the lives of its inhabitants. Meanwhile, a subplot set in a bigger city explains a story of police corruption and the reason why the man escaped. Ok, you just can stare at it hating it and guessing what's the next plot twist, but if you are a film noir fanatic you will just know this is not the way to enjoy this kind of movies. You just have to relax, enjoy the simplicity of the plot, the effectiveness of character descriptions, the good acting and the occasional outbursts of violence.This films provides all the above, and I really enjoyed acting (Dennis Hopper's portrait of a coward sheriff is antologic) and the occasional violence (there are a few shootings very well coreographed and quite believable). The pace is apropiately slow, caring more about details and building an atmosphere of danger and mistery than anything else, and the only reason I did not enjoy the movie completely it is that the police investigation subplot is given too much footage, and it is poorly acted: Peter Coyote is, this time, giving a dull performance."