Unfortunately for me this film came across quite low budget and predictable. I also felt a lot of the moments that were being setup to have chaos later on just didn’t go anywhere, and while if you enjoy this sort of movie you could enjoy it, I personally wouldn’t watch it again.

End of the Road follows a single mother whose husband has just died of cancer travelling cross-country to move in with her family as she can no longer afford the house that her children have grown up in. She is joined on this trip by her two children, her son and daughter, as well as her brother, the Uncle, when things take a turn when they find a dying man in a hotel room and and a lot of money.

Soon the killer starts to hunt down these family members, even resorting to kidnap to make sure that they get the money back that was taken. This starts a storyline for the mother, played by Queen Latifah, who has to work out what she can do to save her family as well as the moral dilemma of what they should do with the money in the end. It’s an interesting storyline, it just didn’t play out very well on screen.

What annoys me about these sort of films is that the main character always has these almost superhuman abilities to be able to get out of any situation they find themselves in. There is a point where Brenda’s money, that is really the killer’s money, is stolen by a worker at the motel and Brenda find herself in a right-wing Nazi camp where she has to fight to escape. Now of course there’s a lot of worry here, Brenda is a black woman so of course she is immediately seen as a minority by these people, but also the fact that if she doesn’t get this money back to the killer her own children will be killed, so she really goes into karate chop mode and is able to defeat everyone very easily. You think this is just a normal working class mother, where did she learn all of these tactics and moves? And why should I find this believable?

There’s even a plot twist in the story line which also seems to be a bit over the top and ridiculous. When you find out who the killer is it’s certainly a shock but then it soon becomes too exaggerated to be believable. I really enjoy films where things seem to play out as they would in real life, of course films are meant to be fantasy and they’re meant to be slightly out of touch, but when you have people that can beat up 20 people alone or men who have the aim of a sharpshooter despite barely holding a gun it really seems over the top. I find it hilarious how they’re meant to be in these life or death situations yet the characters act as if it’s another Tuesday to them, please can someone explain to me how superhuman everyone is in film?

Overall I didn’t enjoy this film and I wouldn’t recommend it. If you like action movies that are a bit exaggerated give it to go, but for me, I wouldn’t watch it again and I wouldn’t recommend it because it was just too over the top and felt a bit cartoonish. If they had made the characters more believable I think I would have enjoyed it more, and if they added more depth to the situation – of course there is some but not enough in my opinion – then you could connect with these characters more and understand how much pain they’ve already gone through and how they just don’t need this extra pain, when really all they want to do is restart their lives and move on.

What do you think of End of the Road?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding