GIve me something really juicy to obsess over, and it's off to the races. I've been a huge fan of Shannyn Sossamon for some time, but I'd missed this movie until recently when it was aired on cable. While I feel that Shannyn is the film's biggest asset, I'm also struck by how her presence is not completely dominating any scene she's in with others. It's clear that this was the right film, right actors, right time and place, because this kind of full-cast chemistry doesn't come along very often. I couldn't help feeling like a fly on the wall who was witnessing the combustible moments, big or small, between these characters. In someone else's review here, they mentioned a killer opening shot. I agree and feel the same way about the closing shot as well. It could've gone on for another five minutes and I wouldn't have noticed. I'm looking forward to watching Road to Nowhere again so I can catch some of the little things I missed, because I'm sure that I did miss some.

As 'Road to Nowhere' begins, pre-production is underway on a movie project about a notorious murder case involving an absconded embezzler, faked accidents and substitute corpses. The director is seeking a lead actress to play the crime's femme fatale - and his search soon unearths an uncanny double of the villainous vamp, whose only previous credit is an 'exploitation' movie. Coincidentally her character is called Velma - which also happens to be the name of the duplicitous missing showgirl in Raymond Chandler's 'Farewell, My Lovely'. After two-thirds of the film is wasted on long shots of characters tying their shoelaces, watching nail polish dry and rehearsing inconsequential dialog, the actress embarks on a tepid love affair with the film's director, which results in some unexplained melodramatic discord and a violent conclusion.Although film-within-a-film concepts have been used previously, as in Truffaut's 'Day For Night' and David Lynch's 'Inland Empire', a disciplined director armed with a coherent screenplay should be able to conjure fresh life from the old dog. Unfortunately 'Road To Nowhere' never provides any useful information about the original crime or those involved, nor does it ever clarify various intrigues amongst the film crew. Director Hellman justifies all the heavy-handed movie references and opaque mysteries by claiming he prefers surreal narratives - but his excuse is fraudulent. This isn't surrealism - it's just dull story-telling - or more accurately, no story-telling.

In Monte Hellman's first feature in 21 years, 'Road to Nowhere' (based on a script from Steven Gaydos), the director weaves together three separate story lines including the making of a film, the film that is being made, and the mystery on which the movie that is being made is based. A double suicide in Bryson County, North Carolina involving a local politician and a Cuban refugee ends up costing the state $100 million. Shortly thereafter director Mitchell Haven (Tygh Runyan) is making a film based on the event as reported on Natalie Post's (Dominique Swain) blog. The film production begins to unravel when the director becomes involved with the unknown actress, Laurel Graham (Shannyn Sossamon), stirring up jealousy and in-fighting among the cast and crew. Matters are not helped when the film's regional consultant, and former insurance investigator, Bruno Brotherton (Waylon Payne), begins to suspect the actress Laurel Graham of being involved in the actual scandal. As the movie unfolds, the plot threads become an insular maze of self-reference gloriously leading nowhere.The title, 'Road to Nowhere,' can apply to any number of Hellman's previous works whether in reference to a pass through the Filipino jungle leading to an enemy camp ('Back Door to Hell'), a trail to Kingsley through terrain so barren it looks like a science-fiction landscape rather than the Utah desert ('The Shooting'), or a cross-country race that loses sight of finish line ('Two-Lane Blacktop'). Furthermore, considering the etymological relationship between the words nowhere and utopia, the title can additionally describe the Quixotic quests of the lead characters in 'Cockfighter' and especially 'Iguana.' I'm glad to see that Monte Hellman is directing again and I can't wait to see where this Road to Nowhere takes him next...because just 'cuz you're heading nowhere doesn't mean you can't make some great stops along the way.

Monte Hellman remains one of America's greatest living filmmakers, director of metaphysical classics like TWO-LANE BLACKTOP (1971), arguably the ultimate American Road Movie, COCKFIGHTER (1974) and a handful of others. Like the masterful Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice (whose classic THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE Hellman gives a nod to in ROAD TO NOWHERE), it's something of a crime that Hellman has directed as few films as he has. So there's great reason to celebrate with the arrival of ROAD TO NOWHERE, his first full feature in over 20 years. Hellman being who he is, ROAD TO NOWHERE is as dense, poetic and mysterious as anything he's made since probably THE SHOOTING in 1968. In fact, his new film is likely his most challenging ever -- but that shouldn't put you off. On the surface, it's the story of a real-life murder-suicide connected to a Southern politician -- a mystery which gets inextricably entangled with the making of a film about the tragedy directed by a moody, obsessive filmmaker (Tygh Runyan, who also played the moody, obsessive Stanley Kubrick in Hellman's "Stanley's Girlfriend") and starring a beautiful, opaque actress (Shannyn Sossamon, in easily her strongest and most rewarding performance to date). Add to this an almost infinite rogue's gallery of characters including veteran actors Cliff De Young and John Diehl, a wry extended cameo from Italian pulp cinema icon Fabio Testi (from Hellman's CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37) -- and you have the strangest Hall of Mirrors this side of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI. If you struggle to make "sense" of the plot, you'll probably miss the point -- since one of the major themes that emerges in ROAD TO NOWHERE is the impossibility of ever making sense of anything. (Hence the title: the Road leads Nowhere, but that shouldn't stop you from taking the journey.) Hellman uses a similar narrative strategy as in his classic TWO-LANE BLACKTOP where about halfway through the story the actual race stops mattering. In ROAD TO NOWHERE, the question of who committed the murder (or whether there was a murder at all) slowly drifts away in a Sargasso Sea of false leads, flashbacks and unanswered questions. What's left is Hellman's portrait of monstrous artistic obsession and some of his most intense and erotically-charged filmmaking ever, played out in long, lingering scenes between Sossamon and Runyan. There's also a bit of M.C. Escher here, like walking up a staircase only to find yourself at the bottom of another staircase, and another ... If you're looking for an easy ride, then you should probably look elsewhere. But if you want to wander off-road, into the mysterious and inexplicable Zone (to quote from Tarkovsky's STALKER) where nothing is as it seems -- then Monte Hellman's ROAD TO NOWHERE is for you.