Double Take: Road to Hell

There is often no good way of starting a review like the one you’re about to read so I’m just going to put this picture of star Clare Kramer up instead…

Age is undefeated. No matter how well an action star or filmmaker has done in his career, there is almost certainly a moment when that person reaches a point where they are no longer the top of the food chain… or even in the middle. That moment has come and gone for even the best of them. Steven Seagal still makes 48 movies a year but sometimes he moves less like a martial arts master and more like a marionette. Van Damme’s action scenes are now getting to the point where they’re more cut up than a Paul Greengrass nightmare. What tends to happen with these guys is an attempt at a collaboration. That is what made The Expendables movies work and it’s what caused many a film-goer to go out of their way to see the Arnold/Sly prison movie The Escape Plan. For legendary action/sci-fi director Albert Pyun, he may want to start getting on the phone with some old friends.

Road to Hell is a project that has been in some sort of movie purgatory for the past 9 years. Conceived as an ‘unofficial sequel’ to the amazing 1984 film Streets of Fire, Road to Hell has more than a few things that connect it to the cult classic film by Walter Hill. What is most noticeable about Road to Hell, however, is that no matter how many actors or iconic songs are brought back for this unofficial sequel, the most important thing missing is also the one that was most endearing to fans; heart.

Join fellow BPA founder Chris the Brain and myself as we perform an autopsy on this movie and see exactly why it didn’t catch the same type of fire as the original…

THE HERO

CHAD: For those of you who haven’t seen Streets of Fire, I’ll wait while you order the film from Amazon or VUDU and watch it… okay, now that you’ve seen how glorious the original is, let me warn you about some things before you seek out Road to Hell. While Michael Paré (the star of Streets of Fire) does return for this unofficial sequel, looks to be in pretty good shape, and often says the exact same lines as in the first movie, this may be the worst sequel I’ve seen since Caddyshack 2. Gone is the heroic tone of the returning soldier in search of the innocent damsel in distress as it is replaced by some PTSD-laden murderer who feels like he comes straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson fever dream. What the hell happened to Tom Cody in the past 20+ years that he is now a psychopath and still wears the same jacket? If Michael Paré’s character had been named John Smith instead of Cody I would only have said this movie was a God-awful mess. But because it’s supposed to be some sort of continuation of a character that I love it feels more like an abysmal attempt that lands somewhere in between raw sewage and runny dog shit on the Rotten Tomatoes meter.

CTB: I have never seen Streets of Fire despite it being on this earth for 30 plus years, and I intentionally kept it that way prior to viewing Road to Hell so I could give a different perspective to the movie. I was not coming in with some great love and admiration for the original or any emotional attachment to the characters in Streets of Fire so to me the whole thing was completely fresh. With all that said… I think I get where Albert Pyun was going with Road to Hell. He wanted to show that there are two sides to everyone. Good and evil. Light and dark. But I felt like way too much time was spent exploring Tom Cody’s dark side. Even with the clean slate approach I came in with, by the time we get to see the good that is still in Tom Cody, I had mentally checked out on him as a heroic figure. Had he become an alcoholic or a drug addict or a womanizer and then saw the light, I could forgive him, but there is no coming back from being a serial killer.

THE VILLAIN

CTB: I’m working under the assumption that the two spree killers Caitlin (Clare Kramer) and Ashley (Courtney Peldon) were meant to be the true villains of the story and not the conflicted hero Tom Cody. But with the Tom Cody character being as dark as he was, the Caitlin and Ashley characters were completely overshadowed. Plus at no point did I feel like Tom Cody was in any sort of danger when he came across Caitlin and Ashley on that deserted stretch of road. An audience should question if the hero is going to be able to defeat the villain… but I never doubted for a second that Tom Cody was going to prevail over the two crazy chicks.

CHAD: I’m glad you wrote the names of the two female characters in there because I couldn’t remember them for the life of me. I thought so little of the characters that I didn’t even write them down in my notes! Michael Paré had it made in Streets of Fire because he was playing opposite Willem Dafoe. We all know that Dafoe is one of the preeminent actors of this generation and he looks creepy as hell. Road to Hell, in comparison, had him working opposite a couple of pussycats who were pretending to be bad. Like Brain said, at no point did I truly think that Tom Cody wasn’t going to do exactly what he wanted.

THE ACTION

CHAD: Road to Hell isn’t so much an action movie as it is an artistic recreation of a person’s own downward spiral into a figurative Hell. At least that’s what it felt like to me. Seriously, I thought that I had died and been forced into the depths of Hell for one of the many sins I’ve committed over the years and was going to be watching this movie for all of eternity. I tried to drink more to make the pain go away but even a steady stream of alcohol into my bloodstream couldn’t protect me from the utter lack of anything resembling an action scene. Streets of Fire had exploding cars, exploding motorcycles, Rick Moranis, Rock concerts, and two men fighting with the pointy sledge hammers that they used to knock in railroad spikes. Even John Candy’s girlfriend from Uncle Buck was badass in Streets of Fire and the best that Road to Hell could do was to put Michael Paré back into his old duster jacket and surround him with enough green screen to make even Zack Snyder dizzy.

CTB:  To me action movies are all about movement and energy… whether it is fist fight, a high speed car chase or a shootout… there is movement and energy involved. But when a movie is almost completely contained to the limits of a green screen, you limit your range of motion and I believe it is the movie’s self-imposed restrictions (some due to budget, others due to the health of the director) that make everything feel so plodding and lifeless, which in turn made it really tough to sit through. Maybe judging Road to Hell by action movie standards is unfair.

THE DECISION MAKING

CTB: When I interviewed Albert Pyun he mentioned that Road to Hell was a dream project of his that was a long time coming. But I found it odd that Pyun, who obviously was a huge fan of Streets of Fire, did not include more of the original cast members. And maybe Pyun did try to get Diane Lane and Amy Madigan involved. Maybe he was hoping that Rick Moranis, who is notoriously picky about what projects he is involved in these days, would stop counting his money from 1989 and choose to be a part of his little independent film. And again, I never saw the original, so I had no attachment to the characters, so them not being in Road to Hell didn’t really hurt it for me. But I do know if I were making a movie that was a sequel to one of my favorites from years gone by, I would do my best to get as many of the key original players involved. If there was no interest from them or I did not have the financing to meet their monetary needs, I would not even bother doing it.

CHAD: Initially, I was so happy to see that Michael Paré was still looking heroic and getting work that I didn’t scroll down the list of other actors involved in the project. I still don’t quite understand how the movie, in its various stages of being made, continued to the point that we got the final product that I watched the other day. At no point during the development could it have seemed like this movie would either be good or make for a decent sequel to the cult classic Streets of Fire. A great movie is always difficult to follow up and one could give Pyun credit for his attempt to go a completely different direction than the original but Road to Hell is such a different direction that it almost makes me angry that a better movie wasn’t made. If Pyun’s ultimate goal was to make such a bad movie that it forces its viewers to re-watch Streets of Fire then he succeeded mightily!