Road to Paloma

Jason Momoa's directing debut "Road to Paloma" was amazing, gritty, rough, and hard to swallow. The amount of emotions I felt during this picture was intriguing. This film was jam packed with heartwarming moments and heartbreaking moments alike. I thought it had a perfect balance of lighthearted and difficult moments. The acting was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed the pace of this movie. It wasn't slow, it was careful. As for anyone complaining that the ending wasn't "satisfying," you're wrong. At the end, he got to do what he set out to do in the beginning and died at peace because he was finally able to spread his mothers' ashes after her horrifying demise. Momoa didn't create this picture to please you, he created this picture to bring to light the injustices committed against Native Americans, and his characters' struggle after taking these matters into his own hands and doing what he believed was right. In my opinion, the ending was satisfying because of the lack of satisfaction for Detective Williams (played by Timothy V. Murphy). Every actor was perfect, every emotion was expertly executed. This might be one of my all time favorite movies.

The Movie was excellent, time well spent. I find the work to be amazing on such a low budget with a stellar cast of b actors. A few of them are not on the screen very long and in this case , that's a good thing. The Native American back story is well played out throughout the movie. My reasons for scoring it in the middle would have to be based on set choice for a montage scene. Without giving a way the story in my opinion, one who has been and knows the country like myself will see that the trial they drive is well to say the least a little out of route. well worth the effort though

First @ Jason Momoa: Your directing and film making is pretty good for a first movie and low budget. Your writing however is pretty bad. Next time try directing something that someone else wrote that is good material, and has all the elements needed and no tragic endings! This is a well made movie , you would never guess it was made on $600,000 budget, ( I read that somewhere) so I give the movie a good score for that. It is realistic movie which is part of the reason it is boring. but some things are outlandish. The story is pretty bad, and not a happy one. Some elements are just hard to believe, like wolf's mom lives on a reservation, and her husband is a Indian cop, yet somehow she is brutally killed by a white guy who I don't know was just wandering around the reservation? then her husband catches him but he doesn't kill him even though it would be quite easy out in the desert , no he arrests him! Then the guy is handed over to the feds who after a year decide killing a Indian woman is no big deal so they just let him go !!! And those words were used in the film. lol Now you don't get to see any of this it is just talked about, but later in the movie another evil white guy has a young Indian girl out in desert, and he is raping and torturing her , so I guess the reservations are where all evil white guys go to rape women?? It just seems too silly and bizarre to believe. (and there seemed to be no reason for this scene, like it was a after thought or maybe they wanted to make sure we know this is happening a lot. So wolf kills the guy in such a manner that there is no doubt he killed the guy ?? I mean he could have knocked him out and take him into the desert and killed him and no one would ever know he did it. But then you couldn't have this tragic ending. So this movie is about after wolf kills the guy and the FBI has one guy after him that wants to catch him and another FBI guy who doesn't. Wolf winds up teaming up with another loser who has a bike to and it is easy rider for awhile , but then gets dark again with the ending. I like Momoa as a actor , so this was sort of OK to watch, also I wanted to see if he could write or direct, and he can direct, but needs to work big time on his writing skills.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film, but having seen the 7.4 rating on IMDb I decided to give it a shot. I am not disappointed, despite the rating being quite a bit lower now. Even though the film is about a fugitive on the run, it does not feel like he is escaping. It feels he is aware of his limited time before facing the law, but it does not change who he is or how he behaves. He travels on his motorcycle, visits friends, helps out whom he can and ultimately is on a mission to spread his mother's ashes where she wished to rest. He joins together with a less perfect but still very likable man and they travel together. They are being pursued by two lawmen, one clearly conflicted and the other totally ruthless. It's a very pleasant ride; we get to know the main hero, empathise with him and presumably are expected to fully agree with him dispensing justice. I won't get into whether we should or shouldn't agree, however the biggest complaint I have about this film is how much it shoves this rationalisation of vigilante justice in our face. The film could have been a lot more subtle and definitely could have hinted another side of the story. We would still sympathise with the protagonist, but through a more realistic understanding of his plight, rather than being fed a one-sided view. I gave this film a 7 despite the above flaw. This is because this flaw is easy to spot, understand and ignore. Once you do that, the film is engaging and enjoyable.

Seriously...ignore the story line description. It must have been written for some other movie. This movie is incredibly boring. It got a 2 because of the nice scenery....and believe me, it takes up a huge chunk of the movie. It was more akin to a travel documentary than a movie. Jason Somoa would be better off sticking to playing good roles in good movies/TV series. There is almost no dialogue. The entire thing could have been done in 15 minutes, and it may have had some entertainment value. I cannot comment on the acting as there is so little of it. The story is all over the place and has little content. Simply put it is just a very boring dissatisfying piece of cinema.

I for one think this film was an excellent work of art. The story was great in my opinion, and it honestly was a different type of tale. Going into the movie I knew the back story, since I had watched some of Jason Momoa's earlier interviews, where he had stated that a lot of serious crimes happen in the native area, but are not taken seriously by the public. This film shows the different aspects of Jason Momoa's work and greatness! I can see why he was tired of being type-cast as the big tough guy - and hopefully this film changes people's thoughts about him and his work. Momoa's acting was very strong, as was the writing and the directing! The directing was just awesome - the wide shots were amazing and it really captured the beauty of land and natural structures. Lastly, the soundtrack was phenomenal and let's not forget Robert Mollohan's portrayal as Cash. His performance was really under-shadowed, and he really deserves some recognition. In conclusion, I feel this movie was amazing. With a mere $600,000 budget, the cast and the story were outstanding. Being tired of sequels and prequels, this is an original tale, which is definitely worth a watch.

source: Road to Paloma

This is one of those self indulgent movies where the cast seem more intent on enjoying themselves than entertaining the audience. Why people think there is some kind of deep meaning in this film is completely beyond me. The plot is very simple really' On the plus side the scenery is beautiful.

Road To Paloma reminded me very much of Easy Rider and although the central plot for both films is different this film seemed to use a similar approach to drive the narrative forward; random introduction of a 'new' stranger to the road trip, cruising around everywhere on motorbikes, lots of nonsensical hippy-dialogue and stoner type talk. For me these things were the root problem with Easy Rider and to be honest I wasn't impressed with having large portions of it rehashed 40 odd years later. Although it establishes its story early on it seems to get largely forgotten about for large portions of the film (the first hour in particular). The film generally moves from scene to scene fairly well, but many of the scenes are rather stupid and seem rather pointless. I suppose the idea is that these scenes exist for the 2 men to 'discover' themselves so to speak, but there's no commentary or insight into anything that happens meaning that a lot of what you're seeing here seems to serve very little purpose. Character development is rather weak and I felt that Momoa could have fleshed out Wolf a little bit more (the idea that Wolf and his father were fugitive and police officer respectively could potentially have created an interesting dynamic, but again this is swept under the carpet). The same could be said for Cash (whose name has an irony in itself) - we learn that he has money problems, but never get to grips with how he got into debt? Any film that spends a lot of its time with just 2 characters needs to afford them some development and provide the characters with some rapport/chemistry otherwise the film will become dull and boring and sadly that's exactly what happens here. Even though the narrative sees 2 FBI agents pursuing Wolf this aspect of the film never really has any intensity or tension. This isn't helped by the clichéd approach that the 'cops' are always 1 step behind the fugitive ( in this case almost literally at every single stage of the film). There are moments where Momoa gets things right; the attempted rape scene that Wolf witnesses affects him badly and the aftermath of this sees him confiding more in Cash - this essentially is where a bond starts to develop between the two men. The film also has quite a moving ending even though ultimately its an ending that can be seen coming. Road To Paloma has one or two strong elements, but sadly I didn't find the majority of the journey from A to B particularly compelling and found a lot of it to be rather boring. If Momoa had played this film as more of a character study then it probably would have worked better. However, for the most part, it's just a 21st century version of Easy Rider with nearly all of its negative trappings included.

Watched this movie at home the other night. Having read one of the reviews here beforehand, i already knew the main concept of the plot, which wasn't really mind-blowing, but i decided to give the movie a shot since the impression movies make isn't always 100% based on plot. If you want a "long story short" opinion, then this movie, despite not being totally bad, does feel kinda plain and pale, more like a university project than a real thing. It does have some nice moments in it, and the nature shots are really beautiful. But that's not a nature documentary, and even if the movie doesn't pretend to be anything too big, you still tend to expect more from it. It's what happens when the director thinks that good intentions are all that really matters. Yes, i already read here on IMDb that Momoa talked in his interviews about the problems concerning the crimes against native Americans. Okay, that's all very touching, but Jason, you still decided to make a movie, not to write a pamphlet. You can't just ask some difficult questions and think that it will do. The acting was very mediocre. Seriously, Jason was much more convincing as Khal Drogo where he had to play by other people's rules, than in this movie where he was his own boss. Dragging his wife into this movie as a person of his character's romantic interest was another thing that made it look like a school project. She's very nice and all, but really, in their scenes together they look like they film their real-life behavior instead of acting their roles. Seriously guys, just get a room, and please, don't film what you do there, at least not for a wide audience. The only more or less believable characters were Cash - but only because he was already backwards enough that anyone who looked like a bum could have played him - and Khal Dro... ehm, Robert Wolf's father, but that might be due to the natives' inherent charisma. But let's put the one-dimensional characters aside and look at more technical stuff. The action scenes were pretty damn fake. Momoa had a very decent performance as Conan and Khal Drogo, so he must know better about such stuff. Instead, we see the silly fights and a shaky cam that tries to hide the fact that the guys punch air or ground instead of each other. Sound editing was also pretty ugly, there are a lot of scene sequences when after a very quiet scene when you have to turn up the volume to hear the conversation there suddenly follows a very loud scene - not cool at all. More of it, in some scenes i could clearly see the lips and sound being out of sync, which is just unprofessional. All in all, this movie is not the worst way to kill an hour and a half of your time, especially if you love the landscape shots and feel benevolent towards the movies that promote the "free spirit" attitude, or maybe you just love Jason Momoa's looks. But for the rest of you folks, this film can easily be skipped without losing too much.