Review of Red Road (2006) by Brandon H — 06 Oct 2010

There are several major flaws with Red Road, but the central one that keeps me from enjoying the film on any steady level involves the exclusion of crucial information. How do we know how to feel during the notorious "NC-17" sex scene very late in the film, when we STILL at that point do not know their relationship? We hardly understand it in even general terms. At this crucial juncture, the movie has withheld too much information for too long, and makes these late scenes boring, almost ridiculous. Perhaps the director knew that if WE knew that Clyde had killed her daughter, we never would have believed her actions.

So there you go. I was instead watching that scene, and previous and subsequent scenes, with mild disinterest, because I had no idea what was at stake, what was really emotionally going on with her, or him. I didn't know if he SHOULD recognize her or not, if there was even the possibility of it being a con, or if he was a tiny or large part of her life. The movie doesn't give us enough good clues for us to deduce this ourselves, either, and therefore a thousand gallons of tension is lost. We know he's dangerous, we know he's harmed her now deceased children. We think. But was he their father? Her ex husband? Was he an affair? A murderer? Turns out he was none of these things, but these were the options that crossed my mind, because the movie pointed to all of them and none of them. We know she was married and she's not anymore, but what happened there? And yes, it is the movie's responsibility to give me enough grounding information so that I at least know how tense to feel, at least on a sensory level, as the scenes progress. Otherwise it's simply manipulative, teasing, stringing us along because the film doesn't have enough plot left (or enough scenes) waiting in its little bag to draw out once it does finally give us that information. But by then it's far too late.

And now let's think about said plot. Our protagonist's little girl was killed by this Clyde. So was her husband. Bear this in mind. She follows Clyde around on the screens, at first scared but then later almost like an obsessive school girl crush. She follows him around for far too long, and it doesn't seem to advance the movie at all, in many of those scenes. Again the movie seems to be filling space, stretching the time before it has to make the reveal. So finally she gets to know Clyde after they exchange words for the first time about halfway through the movie. She flirts with him, dances with him, feels conflicted about doing so, but keeps going back, obsesses over him on the TVs some more, follows him around some more, enters his apartment whether he's there or not, gets to know his roommates, goes to his apartment, has sex with him which she clearly enjoys (the movie makes this all too obvious), then bangs herself up in a bathroom and inserts his semen into her vagina to accuse him of rape.

Great, so this was all a setup to get him back in jail. Really? If you think about this for even a split second, not only is this incredibly ridiculous on several levels emotionally alone, but even logistically and practically. Why risk being caught and booked on falsely accusing someone? Especially since there were two witnesses to her showing up complacently, on her own accord? Not to mention her obvious motive, which, unless the Scottish courts are moronic, surely they could put together a) hey, this guy killed her daughter 10 years ago, I have that in a file around here somewhere... and b) isn't that a strange coincidence that she bumped into him again as soon as he got out of jail? It just doesn't make sense, not for her, in her position, with her current state, and her supposed intelligence. Why not just leave him alone, since he lives in the slums, far from the protagonist? Or if she insists on revenge, you mean to tell me there's not another way that doesn't involve what would normally be an emotionally damaging experience (sex with the offender) to put him back in jail? How about just a beating and not the rape (after all, she was informed at the beginning that even just a "small" mishap and he'd be back in jail)? Or is she really just that horny? That much of a slut? I don't believe it. And if that's the film, it should have been marketed as a D-rate porno (most boring porno the world has ever made) instead of art.

Not to mention as soon as she makes the accusation and he's carted off to jail, she withdraws it. So where does that leave us? What was the point of what we just watched, again? To watch a character, who is frankly much smarter and much more shy than someone who would commit a couple of the actions in this film, abuse and exploit herself for a decision she clearly wasn't even committed to? I don't think so. She's lived with the grief of her dead child and husband for 10 years. She sleeps with their urns at night, for Christ's sake. You can't have it both ways just to ramp up the tension. It's simply not a believable movie by any stretch of the imagination. On its worst level it might even be seen as repulsive, insulting, and honestly, just plain cheap.