6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.8 |
In this intense road movie Wolf is a Native American on the run after avenging his mother's murder. As he flees across the desolate American West on his motorcycle, he'll discover that justice has a cost Wolf's search for redemption will reveal secrets and take him on a journey where the roads have some very unexpected turns. A powerful story of family, strangers, pride and penance.
Starring: Jason Momoa, Lisa Bonet, Robert Homer Mollohan, Kelly Noonan, Lance HenriksenThriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 2.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Writer/Director/Actor Jason Momoa's (Conan the Barbarian) Road to Paloma embodies the quintessential spirit of the American West "Road" movie. Motorcyclists, wide open spaces, hard living, right hearts, a sincere quest, and chaacters dogged by the law define the film's structure. It's never quite laser-focused but never meandering too far from its center, exploring the lives of its characters and the spirits that drive them while shaping the world in which they live with an almost casual pace, where the urgency comes not from without but from within, where the story finds its meaning in the little things rather than the broader plot pieces. Some audiences may be put off by the more deliberate pacing and the absence of explosions, fireballs, gunfire, motorcycle tricks, and other "Action" film elements. This is a throwback movie in every way, something that would have felt right at home in the 1970s. It's a fine example of how cinema operates on a smaller, more intimate scale, driven by characters and guided by feeling rather than generic mass appeal pieces that would otherwise mask the beauty of the film's simple premise and the complexities at work deep within it.
Ceremony.
Road to Paloma's 1080p transfer won't be winning any awards for "prettiest Blu-ray image." The troubled transfer never shines and, even at its best, never looks all that great. Generally, and aside from a few brief exceptions, details prove highly disappointing. Textures are smudgy and indistinct, lacking pinpoint detail, sharpness, and clarity. Faces and clothes sometimes showcase more than basic features, but terrain and vegetation are disappointingly indistinct, a shame considering the gorgeous backdrops dotted throughout the film. Colors fare little better; the earthy backgrounds are offset by some green vegetation and bits of color, such as red signage on an out-of-the-way gas station exterior. The image suffers from other maladies, including false colors, jagged lines (nearly every straight surface, and particularly telephone wires and rail tracks), aliasing, and banding are commonplace. Black levels are murky and poorly defined. Flesh tones are flat but never too warm. There's nary a shot in the movie where something -- smudged details, aliasing, and the like -- are not readily evident. According to IMDB, the film was shot with the "prosumer" Canon 5D Mark II digital camera, so the technical shortcomings are not wholly unexpected.
Road to Paloma rides onto Blu-ray with a satisfactory Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The track produces a bit of fair ambience, opening with light blowing winds that nicely, but not fully or transparently, drift through the stage. Other exterior ambient effects are likewise introduced with good placement but not precision reproduction. Music enjoys solid clarity and presence across the stage. Sound effects are dominated by the guttural screams of a revving motorcycle engine, which plays with a satisfactory presence and low end. Dialogue is generally clear and focused but does come across as somewhat scratchy and muddled, at times, notably during a garage sequence early in the film.
Road to Paloma contains only one supplement, a deleted scene entitled The Hunt (1080p, 4:30).
Road to Paloma is in many ways a classic Road film, a picture of inward exploration juxtaposed against the more literal and linear outward journey. Though it's paced deliberately and lacks much in the way of raw action, the film satisfies -- and then some -- through its explored, but not fully defined, inner journeys. It perfectly blends a simple exterior with a complicated interior, all of which is shaped by gorgeous photography and locations as well as several high quality performances. Road to Paloma features troubled video, decent audio, and only one supplement, a deleted scene. Recommended on the strength of the film.
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