Road, Movie Hindi Movie
Road, Movie has made it to several international film festivals, the director Dev Benegal is a veteran, and Abhay Deol movies are always a good watch. No reason to not watch the film. And I did, even before the other interesting release this weekend (Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge). But sadly, Road, Movie was a colossal disappointment.
The story first. Vishnu (Abhay Deol), a restless young man, itches to escape his father's faltering hair oil business. He takes up the job of delivering an antique lorry, which would be sold to the local museum. Along the way, Vishnu reluctantly picks up a young runaway (Mohammed Faizal Usmani), a wandering old entertainer (Satish Kaushik) and a striking gypsy woman (Tannishtha Chatterjee - Brick Lane). Together they roam the barren land, searching for water and an elusive fair. The journey turns dire when they are waylaid by corrupt cops and a notorious water lord.
Road, Movie is a boring journey, with zilch entertainment value and well, just not something that would work with the Indian audience. The performances are adequately good and the dialogues and its delivery (each characters have a different accent, even though all speak Hindi) is pretty interesting.
It's just 95 minutes long but actually feels longer than a 3 hour epic. The pace is dreadfully slow, the film, shot in a desert has this boring documentary look all over it. It does get interesting with certain well written and executed sequences but soon fizzles out.
Abhay Deol is his natural self. Tanisshtha Chetterjee doesn't get her diction right, but acts well. Saurabh Shukla is good. But the film belongs to junior artist Mohammed Faisal, who delivers by far the best performance.
To sum up, only those souls blessed with tons of patience can sit through a movie like Road. Trips to numerous film festivals around the world mean nothing if a movie less than 2 hours long, bores you to sleep.
