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The Car: Road to Revenge – Netflix Review (2/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Feb 1, 2020 | 3 minutes

THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE is a new horror-action-thriller on Netflix. It’s what you could call a “spiritual” or “stylized” sequel to The Car from 1977. This has become quite a cult horror classic. Read our full The Car: Road to Revenge review here!

The Car: Road to Revenge is a new movie on Netflix. It’s in the horror, thriller and action hybrid genre and should reach plenty of fans. And also, quite a few people who simply will not like it. I’m probably somewhere in the middle on this one. I enjoy some elements while, at the same time, thinking I won’t be watching this again.

In many ways, it reminded me of both the Mad Max universe (the decade-old one with Mel Gibson) and Escape from New York with Kurt Russell. We’re in a dystopian world where the men are all deeply chauvinistic and nobody’s really a “good guy”. However, they still get the girl since they’re somehow irresistible.

I appreciate that this is a throwback to how these movies and stories were, but I would also love an update to these stereotypes. The Car: Road to Revenge is all about the old school style and I’m torn because I like it for nostalgic reasons, but dislike all the stuff that we’re otherwise over.

Continue reading our The Car: Road to Revenge review below. Maybe you’ll get an idea of whether you need to check it out on Netflix or simply sit this one out.

A different kind of sequel

The Car: Road to Revenge  is what you could call a “spiritual” or “stylized” sequel to the 1977 cult classic horror movie The Car . However, you can easily watch this 2019 movie on its own. If you haven’t watched the 1977 movie (or can’t remember much from it), then you’ll still be able to follow everything in this new plot.

However, The Car: Road to Revenge does feature an homage to the original with the return of actor Ronny Cox as the Mechanic. Obviously, you don’t need to have watched the other movie, to enjoy his performance but it  will add a layer to it all.

Back in 1977 , The Car  was definitely an unconventional kind of horror movie. After all, John Carpenter’s Christine (based on the novel by  Stephen King ) didn’t come out till 1983. However, since then, we have seen all kinds of stories told in horror movies, so not much will shock an audience.

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About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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The Car / The Car: Road to Revenge

THE CAR (1977) is directed by Elliot Silverstein (CAT BALLOU) and written by Dennis Shryack & Michael Butler (THE GAUNTLET, CODE OF SILENCE , PALE RIDER ) and Lane Slate (DEADLY GAME) and it’s a killer car movie before CHRISTINE . Its faceless villain is a cool looking matte black 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III customized by George Barris, designer of the Munster Koach, Knight Rider and maybe the Batmobile (rival Wikipedia editors seem to have added conflicting information on that). Anyway it kinda looks like a hearse and has a big, distinctive grill. I could see the Tall Man from PHANTASM cruising around in this thing.

One day, for no specific reason of which I am aware, The Car starts terrorizing the residents of a small desert town. It starts on a mountain pass, where it runs two bicyclists off the road. Just the idea of them riding around on those roads in normal traffic seemed scary to me, even if there wasn’t a haunted, kill-crazy, self-driving car in the area. But there is! It taunts them by driving right next to them and then forcing them into a wall and off a bridge.

And The Car could’ve easily moved along and nobody would’ve ever known what happened to those kids, but maybe it’s a killer car that wants to be caught, because its next crime is in front of a witness. This is an example of the pleasing oddness of this movie: a hippie dude is sitting on the side of a dusty road playing his french horn when he sees a mean old bastard named Amos (R.G. Armstrong, Pruneface from DICK TRACY ) chasing his poor wife Bertha (Doris Dowling, THE BLUE DAHLIA) down the street. After a bit of hesitation, the horn player tries to intervene, and then they get into an argument about his horn playing. Realizing he’s not helping anything he packs his instrument into its case and tries to hitchhike out of there.

Unfortunately The Car is the next vehicle to pass. It doesn’t stop, he yells at it in frustration, so it turns around, comes back and runs him over a couple times.

It’s such a weird incident and it kind of throws you off after so many horror movies where it’s the bad guy who gets it. I think the fact that Amos gets away with the way he treats Doris is partly because of when it’s made, but it also paints a realistically bleak portrait of domestic violence. Everybody knows about it without doing much, Doris is afraid to press charges, and the cop who tries to get her to does it with the ulterior motive that he’s her ex and wants her to get back together with him. She’s stuck.

I didn’t figure out at first that he’s a sheriff’s deputy. This is smart because it makes us accept him as a person with a complex home situation before he’s an authority figure investigating a, uh, crime or whatever. We also spend some time with Lauren at the school where she teaches, where we learn her and her co-worker/friend Margie (Elizabeth Thompson, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN RIDE! ) are modern sexually liberated ladies, and get to hang out often because Margie is married to Wade’s partner Luke (Ronny Cox, STEELE JUSTICE ).

Of course they first investigate this death as if it’s a hit and run driver – a human being operating a motor vehicle. Wrong! They’re frustrated that Amos didn’t see the driver, can’t identify the make or model and can barely even describe it. But The Car keeps running over people and then chases the entire school marching band during a rehearsal. They take shelter in a cemetery and the teachers really go above and beyond what they’re being paid for, standing up to what they think is an unseen driver, trying to goad him into showing himself, not necessarily understanding that he stopped because this is consecrated ground, and he’s one of those newfangled cars forged in demonic hellfire, running on unleaded eye of newt, witch’s brew and melted down heavy metal records (speculation). I don’t know what it’s called, I think it’s like the Warlock 2000 or something like that, but whatever it is I gotta assume it is 100% theologically legit because according to Wikipedia Anton Lavey of the Church of Satan was credited as a technical adviser. (You might have to play it backwards to see it, because I couldn’t find his name in the credits.)

Anyway, I like that the teachers start yelling at The Car and some of them aren’t used to cursing so things they yell include “You punk, psycho idiot horse’s ass!” and “CAT POO!”

They start to notice some other unnatural things associated with The Car, such as a “strange wind” that blows Wade over and knocks him out when he tries to open the door. Also, there are no door handles. SO HOW WOULD SOMEBODY GET INSIDE? Let that sink in . Obviously the last act involves a bunch of car chase stuff – the stunt coordinator is Everett Creach (GORDON’S WAR, THE DRIVER , HOWARD THE DUCK , NEAR DARK ). The silliest part and also my favorite is when the Car crashes and rolls over some cop cars and looks like it’s getting totally wrecked and then lands neatly and drives away magically undamaged. Satanically undamaged.

I noticed that the theme by Leonard Rosenman ( BARRY LYNDON , PROPHECY, ROBOCOP 2 ) sounds an awful lot like THE SHINING, which of course came a few years later. It turns out it’s because they’re both quoting the same traditional Gregorian melody, “Dies irae” (“the Day of Wrath”). And/or because Stanley Kubrick’s favorite movie of all time was THE CAR.

There’s definitely a strong feel of the era – a little bit like a ‘70s TV movie, but one of the good ones. I like the sunny atmosphere and serious pacing. I think I’ve seen it referred to as “ JAWS with a car,” which is a reasonable description of the tone, but it also makes me wish it was more of a straight up ripoff. Like, there should be somebody in the Richard Dreyfus shark expert slot, like a mechanic or an engineer from an auto manufacturer or something, to offer his expertise on The Car. And of course there should be a Quint, a guy who has hunted cars before, but never one this big. Only a Volkswagen or something. Maybe a character from THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS? I haven’t seen that one. I should see it.

I’ve been enjoying the films of Dick Maas this year, and it strikes me that (although this came first) it has some similarities to his approach. Like THE LIFT , it’s a mystery about a machine coming to life and killing people, treated very seriously, and with characters who are pretty funny and likable (and horny). It seems a little less aware of its absurdity, and its solution seems to be supernatural rather than science fictional, but I’ve come to really like this approach of taking a completely ludicrous premise and saying okay, yes, it’s ridiculous, but moving on, what can we do with this? (For a more surreal, sweaty, fever dream approach, check out Tobe Hooper’s killer-laundry-press epic THE MANGLER .)

In the end they come up with a big plan that involves ( SPOILER ) matador-ing the motherfucker to drive off a cliff and setting off a shitload of dynamite. They pull it off and then they all see some sort of giant demon face in the fire of the explosion. Wade says it’s all over and Luke says, “But in the fire, didn’t you see — I saw—“

Wade puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “It’s over, Luke.”

The craziest thing about ROAD TO REVENGE – not including that somebody completely out of the blue decided that the world was looking for a part two to a fairly obscure killer car movie from 42 years ago* – is the approach they chose. You’d think the idea would be to rehash the same basic plot in 2019, with more modern (not as good) look and pacing, either a modern car or the original one being chased by modern cars, maybe some nods to the stylistic choices of popular car movies of today like THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS or some shit. Instead they made it a cyberpunk sequel. It’s as much like a low rent JOHNNY MNEMONIC as it is like THE CAR. Its villain is a dude called Talen (Martin Hancock, 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE) who looks straight out of GHOST IN THE SHELL with his cyborg eyes and fancy white leather coat. He does cybernetic surgery on street gangs who act as his army called “The Night.”

I love that we live in a world where the movie about James Brolin fighting a car from Hell is in official continuity with this story where there’s a vicious gang of assassins consisting of a wicked punk lady with wrist-mounted blowtorch (Nina Bergman, DOOM: ANNIHILATION), a top-hat Ozzie Osbourne rock star type dude with a middle finger that turns into a drill (Keith-Lee Castle, SEED OF CHUCKY , Dracula on Young Dracula ), a guy who dresses like a vampire with frilly shirt and everything (not sure who the actor is) and a big leather jacket guy with one robot arm (stuntman Ivan Iliev). Also there are some random old west style cowboys around.

It’s a low budget movie, so they don’t bother with a whole BLADE RUNNER type city. At the beginning they combine a red light district type stripper display, a 2049 style hologram and that tried and true B-movie staple, the graffiti-alley-with-flaming-oil-barrels. Otherwise they’re mostly on normal roads or at a strip club. In one part there’s a mystical prophet guy with a virtual reality helmet. In an attempt at Verhoeven type satire there’s both an out of control gang problem and a fascist police state. The D.A. (Jamie Bamber, Battlestar Galactica ?) prosecutes a guy and as soon as he’s pronounced guilty a glass booth pops up in the court room and explodes him to death.

The hero is the D.A.’s off-again girlfriend Daria (Kathleen Munroe, THE VOID), who he tries to win back over dinner and then completely loses by driving fast through the bad part of town in his fancy Lazarus-1 prototype car, saying, “Only way we can cut through this filth this quickly.” He also says “Nobody likes an angry woman, Daria” and then threatens her with some possessive bullshit when she tells him off.

So we’re very much not rooting for the guy when the aforementioned gang ambushes him at his office looking for “the chip,” even though he unexpectedly puts up a good fight and yells “YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE FUCKING WITH!” before being thrown out a window and splattering on his fancy car.

Now, I don’t know if it’s supposed to be supernatural again or science-fictional or a hybrid, but the Lazarus-1 becomes The Car. It’s a more modern, less hearse-y car, but does have a similar grill. Because it was that asshole boyfriend, it follows his ex Daria around in between tracking each of the gang members and running them over. There’s a funny part where Daria is getting it on and the camera pans down and there’s the car and its lights turn on. Jealous.

(I wish there was a DARKMAN / SPAWN style scene where it’s spying on her and she almost sees it and it burns out, as if crying “Don’t look at me! I don’t want you to see me like this!”)

The male lead is burly, rude homicide detective Rainer (Grant Bowler, KILLER ELITE , SWELTER) who investigates Daria and is a jerk but slowly wins her over and they fall in love. That’s ridiculous, but he kind of grew on me too, and he has a big lug quality that stands out from standard leading men. There’s a cool part where he goes to the apartment of some informant ( at first I thought it was his ex-wife) and a teenager answers the door and shoots at him but he grabs his wrist and pulls the gun away. Then he asks the mom some questions, hands her the gun and says, “Keep that kid on a leash.”

There are definitely some dull stretches, and even when it turns into a stunt show there’s a cheapness to it – a bunch of cars and motorcycles driving around with the characters dubbed in talking to each other over the radio, no shots of them inside the vehicles, like they only had time for second unit. But there’s a high quality shock where some cops pick up Daria but she figures out they’re not actually cops and overpowers them, making them get out of the car and get down on the ground, at which point The Car comes zipping by and just flattens both of them. By far the most impressive thing about the movie is the graphic bodies and heads being run over. Good job on that shit, for sure.

The big connection to the original, maybe, is late in the movie when Ronnie Cox actually shows up. But he doesn’t act like he’s the same character, and is credited as “Waits,” not Luke Johnson. He’s some kind of junkman who finds the new Car totally wrecked and is excited because it’s a rare concept car or whatever and he has the perfect car to use for parts to repair it… yes, under a tarp somehow he has what looks like the original Car. He combines them and is shocked that it runs him over and I don’t know if now it’s the dead D.A. or the dead car demon or half ghost car half demon car or A.I. or who the fuck knows. But it’s on the road to revenge. That much is clear.

How/why did this sequel come about? I don’t know, but director G.J. Echternkamp wrote, directed and edited DEATH RACE 2050 in 2017, so you could say he specializes in completely unexpected way-after-the-fact sequels to car-related cult movies of the ‘70s. Maybe he’ll do SUPERVAN RELOADED or DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY: FUTURE WARS next. The script is credited to Michael Tabb (WEREWOLF: THE BEAST AMONG US) and Echternkamp (FRANK AND CINDY) & Matt Yamashita (SHARKTOPUS VS. PTERACUDA, SHARKTOPUS VS. WHALEWOLF). I like his choice to revive a ‘70s movie in the 2010s but taking place in the future but with an aesthetic that seems kinda stuck in the ‘90s but not in a nostalgic way. You don’t get many of those. I hope they do one for ORCA now.

*I say this like it makes no sense, but of course it does. If this was, like, REVENGEMOBILE or something I wouldn’t have even considered watching it. But having the THE CAR branding on it got me. They knew what they were doing.

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11 Responses to “The Car / The Car: Road to Revenge”

October 27th, 2020 at 1:26 pm

It’s interesting how much of a “love it or hate it” affair THE CAR is. I’ve seen it pop up on several “worst films ever” lists, even from people who are normally not above enjoying such movies (For example the TRAILERS FROM HELL commentary from John Landis isn’t really positive), but I also know a bunch of people who downright love it. Including me! It’s no masterpiece, but there enough moments of greatness, like the straight-faced ridiculous premise, the wideshot where we see the car announce itself from far, far away through the sunlight reflecting in its windshield, the encounter in the garage and of course the car howling and screaming when it’s unable to get to the kids. Man, for something that is supposed a lifeless object, they sure gave that fucker a lot of personality!

October 27th, 2020 at 2:52 pm

If THE CAR is an homage to any Steven Spielberg movie then surely it’s DUEL?

October 27th, 2020 at 3:58 pm

What Vern said when he woke up this morning:

SEND IN THE CAAAAAAAAR

Guy sends in the car All credit goes to Die Hard, which I don't own

October 27th, 2020 at 5:40 pm

I know it’s from another decade, but it always surprised me that nobody ever considered making a sequel to 1986’s THE WRAITH. You could get away with setting the sequel in a dystopian cyberpunk future seeing how the car and driver in that movie were already kind of futuristic-looking. Maybe make it more like “ROAD WARRIOR meets THE CROW” and have Lord Humungous play chicken with Eric Draven. You could probably get Sherrilyn Fenn or even Christopher Bradley to do a cameo.

October 27th, 2020 at 5:42 pm

Next stop on the road… RUBBER (2010)?

October 27th, 2020 at 11:42 pm

It’s amazing just how serious the dialog and acting between Cox and Brolin are at times. I love this movie, but I actually think that it would have been more effective with a more “normal” looking car. As it is we get that this is a vehicle from hell the minute it shows up.

October 28th, 2020 at 11:06 am

Is there any pleasure quite like being totally blown away by a movie you expected to be a piece of shit? When I sat down to watch The Car I was just hoping I wouldn’t be too bored, but it’s clever, it has personality, and there are some great moments / twists / kills, so I came away loving it intensely. Good JAWS rip-off, great movie.

October 28th, 2020 at 11:41 am

I totally thought that was Josh Brolin in the first screenshot.

October 29th, 2020 at 5:25 am

I suspect Josh’ look in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is modelled after his dad’s in THE CAR.

October 29th, 2020 at 7:13 am

I support a Rubber review (though it might be too self-consciously artsy for its own good). Though if we’re talking about surrealist sentient automobile-adjacent movies, I’d recommend Holy Motors way more for its car skit. And all the other skits; it’s artsy as hell, but so much fun.

October 29th, 2020 at 12:18 pm

I saw RUBBER in the theater for some reason, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a more severe artistic whiplash between expectations and reality when watching a movie. Not necessarily in a *good* way, and I have a very high tolerance for metatextual shit about the nature of art. According to wikipedia, even the director of the movie got bored with it halfway through writing, and that feeling, as I recall, is palpable onscreen. It has my highest not-recommendation.

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The Car: Road to Revenge (2019) – Review

In 1977, Universal Pictures released a nice little horror film called The Car , which had James Brolin and Ronny Cox dealing with a demonic car that was terrorizing their small Midwestern town. Now, over forty years later, we get a sequel to that horror classic…well, kind of, but not really. Universal Pictures is once again the distributor, but fans of the original will be hard pressed to find any similarities between their beloved classic and this supposed sequel.

The film takes place in the not so distant future — your basic low budget cyberpunk setting — where criminals are tried, convicted, and executed all in the same day, and even in the same place, so it’s nice to see that the future is all about convenience, but as harsh as the judicial system seems to be, crime itself is still running rampant in this dystopian city. District Attorney Caddock ( Jamie Bamber ) wants to see the streets cleaned up, even if he has to be an asshole about it, but when he comes into possession of a certain data chip, one that belongs to the notorious crime lord Talen ( Martin Hancock ) who runs a human trafficking ring, while also dabbling in illegal cybernetic enhancements, a group of said cybernetic goons are sent to retrieve the chip.

These guys are The Devil’s Rejects’ rejects.

Torture fails to make Caddock give up the data chip, so they toss him out of his high-rise office window, where he crash-lands on the roof of his own luxury sedan. Homicide Detective Rainier ( Grant Bowler ) is put on the case, and his first step is to track down a woman named Daria ( Kathleen Monroe ), who was the last person known to have seen Caddock alive. Daria had a complicated history with the deceased, her being an ex-girlfriend with a past drinking problem, that wasn’t helped by Caddock being a controlling dickhead. Talen’s minions also wish to have a few words with Daria, hoping that she may have some idea as to where the data chip is located, and that is when The Car rolls in. Turns out that when Caddock pancaked onto the roof of his car, his soul fused with the vehicle, and now the driverless automobile prowls the streets seeking revenge, as well as the continued stalking of his ex-girlfriend.

Is this director G.J. Echternkamp’s idea of an imposing killer car?

By this point, it’s obvious that for anyone who has seen the 1997 original,  The Car: Road to Revenge is not running by the same playbook, as in the original, it was made fairly clear that The Car was some incarnation of The Devil himself, while in The Car: Road to Revenge we are dealing with a car possessed by a vengeful spirit. Basically, we’re talking a bargain-basement Christine , but with a standard Tales From the Crypt plot, and as the film progresses, Echternkamp looks to make up for any lack of continuity, or originality for that matter, by tossing in random moments of nudity and extreme gore. This pretty much fails at every level. The only shining light amongst this used car lot of crap is the chemistry between the two leads; Bowler and Monroe really seem to be enjoying themselves, and the script even allows them some fun banter, when not being interrupted by the puerile garbage that makes up the rest of the script. But whenever we start to think the film might try something interesting, or at least to not be openly insulting, the script forces characters to do the standard dumb things people are apparently required to do in a horror movie.

Pull the bloody trigger, you complete idiot!

But just when you think this movie is a sequel in name only, with not one single plot element to connect this thing with the original, Ronny Cox shows up as some junkyard dude. Now, this cannot be the same character that Ronny Cox played in the original, as not only was the character a cop, but going by this film’s “futuristic” timeline, he’d be long dead, so maybe this is just a cute casting nod to the original film, but no, that is not the case. At some point in the film, The Car is practically destroyed by Talen’s minions — by gunfire no less, which is something that couldn’t even scratch the original Car — and Ronny Cox’s junkyard mechanic comes across the wreckage and decides to fix it up, but the damage is too extensive, so he must use a “donor car” to rebuild the vehicle, and the donor car looks like The Car from the original film.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

• Is the donor car just another customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III, or is it the actual Devil car from the original movie? • If this thing was The Car, what was it doing in this dude’s garage? And how and why The Car ended up here would easily have made a better movie than the one we got. • After killing Ronny Cox, the “new” Car proceeds to drive through the city, mowing down innocent civilians, left right and center. Before it was just knocking off the gang members who murdered Caddock, so why is it now murdering people at random? • This seems to imply that parts from the donor car have made it eviler, yet it still seems to have the hots for Caddock’s ex-girlfriend. So what the fuck is controlling The Car, is it Caddock or The Devil?

This is one of those sequels that seems designed to piss off fans.

The 1977 original ended with a perfect set-up for a sequel, during the end credits we saw that The Car had survived being blown up by Brolin and Cox, and was now heading into Los Angeles, but the filmmakers behind The Car: Road to Revenge decided to ignore such notions, and instead they made a movie that is more a mash-up of Robocop 2 and John Carpenter’s Christine than anything to do with the original film. I know one shouldn’t expect too much from a direct-to-video sequel, but goddamn it, I’ve waited over forty years for a sequel to that classic horror film, and this is the crap we got?

This film deserves to languish in the used car lot of hell.

The car: road to revenge (2019).

• Movie Rank - 2.5/10 2.5/10

I didn’t expect much out of a film called The Car: Road to Revenge , but the filmmakers here have managed to land their product well below even my incredibly low expectations.  If you are a fan of the original film do yourself a favor, give this one a wide berth.

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The Car: Road to Revenge Reviews

Dreadful as it sounds...See it if you're contemplating a cyberpunk tour of Bulgaria.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 4, 2020

What's missing in the direct-to-video sequel is a coherent story. And, a director who even knows what-the-heck is going on at any given time.

Full Review | Original Score: F | Jan 13, 2019

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The Car: Road to Revenge

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Grant Bowler (Rainer) Kathleen Munroe (Daria) Martin Hancock (Talen) Micah Balfour (Greyvenstein) Burt Grinstead (Jag) Nina Bergman (Ash) Jamie Bamber (Caddock) Ronny Cox (Waits) Keith-Lee Castle (Payne) Ivan Iliev (Henry) Katrina Nare (Mila) James Bradshaw (Yasha) Anton Poriazov (Petrov) Kaloyan Trifonov (Stoolie) Atanas Srebrev (Fat Cat) Velizar Peev (Tink) Terry Randall (Judge) Derek Morse (Crooked Cop)

G.J. Echternkamp

An unscrupulous District Attorney is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance.

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The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review

The Car: Road to Revenge (2019)

Rating: ★.

Director – G.J. Echternkamp, Screenplay – G.J, Echternkamp, Michael Tabb & Matt Yamashita, Producers – Jeffrey Beach & Phillip Roth, Photography – Martin Chichov, Music – Frederik Wiedmann, Visual Effects Supervisor – Nikolay Alanasov, Special Effects Supervisor – Georgi Kraev, Makeup Effects – Ludmil Ivanov, Lyudmil Nikolov & Sofia Rakova, Production Design – BrendanTurrill. Production Company – UFO International.

Grant Bowler (Detective Rainer), Kathleen Munroe (Daria Morris), Jamie Bamber (James Caddock), Martin Hancock (Talen), Micah Balfour (Greyvenstein), Burt Grinstead (Jag), Nina Bergman (Ash), Ronny Cox (Waits), Katrina Nare (Mila), Keith-Lee Castle (Payne), Ivan Iliev (Henry)

Sometime in the near future. James Caddock is a fiercely determined District Attorney who has the criminals he convicts executed on the spot in the courtroom. Following a bust, Caddock takes possession of a chip containing tech from The Night – a criminal organisation led by Talen who conducts cyborg enhancements on his followers. Caddock has just purchased a new luxury sedan Lazarus 1 and takes his sometimes girlfriend Daria Morris out for dinner. He leaves the chip inside the Lazarus 1. Members of The Night then burst into his office in search of the chip. They throw Caddock out the window, landing on the Lazarus. His death is investigated by Detective Rainer. Soon after, the car comes to life, bursts out of impound and begins tracking down and killing the members of The Night who were responsible for Caddock’s murder. Rainer senses a connection to Daria and the two of them join forces to solve the mystery of the car.

--> The Car (1977) was one of those forgotten films from 1970s horror. It feels as though someone took Steven Spielberg’s first film Duel (1971) in which a motorist is pursued by an evil truck with a never-seen driver and decided to mash it up with the era’s prevailing fad for possession films that came about following the huge hit of The Exorcist (1973). While modestly enjoyable, it is not regarded as one of the classics of the era and ends up frequently overlooked. The surprise is that 42 years after the original came out, it has produced a sequel.

The Car was an enjoyable and uncomplicated horror film. One of the stranger things about it was that The Car just was – no explanation was offered, although you could see that it was supernatural in nature in that it wouldn’t enter a graveyard. One of the weirder things about The Car: Road to Revenge is that it seems to offer too many explanations – District Attorney Jamie Bamber is thrown out of his office and lands on the car and there is the assumption in The Car’s actions (hunting down those who killed him) that his personality has been transferred into it – the car is even unsubtly named Lazarus 1. On the other hand, he also places a piece of rogue tech created by the gang into the car with the suggestion that it has gained a life of its own. Even further, Ronny Cox (the one holdover from the original film where he played a deputy) turns up in the latter scenes looking well past it at the age of 80 and refits the new car (a modified Chrysler 300 SRT8) with the body of the original car (a modified 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III) that he just happened to have lurking around his workshop.

The film is directed G.J. Echternkamp who previously made a sequel to another 1970s genre car film with Death Race 2050 (2017). In either film, it feels like Echternkamp has made a knockoff of the original as quickly as possible without any concern for the quality of the product turned out. The two versions of The Car rarely even seem the same film. The setting goes from the original’s smalltown Utah to city sometime in the future (shot on location in Bulgaria). It is a near-fascistic future where criminals are convicted and then killed right there in the courtroom (which feels like something appropriated from Judge Dredd) and the streets are dominated by a rogue organisation that conducts cyborg modifications on their members. However, Echternkamp displays zero interest in fleshing out the background in any more detail than that.

The original The Car is filled with cool scenes where The Car turns up in absurdly improbable places. By contrast with the sequel, Echternkamp makes an action film where The Car does little more than turn up and run people over. None of Echternkamp’s set-ups come anywhere near the original with the exception of one WTF scene where the car turns towards several pursuers and then does a flip and rolls over the top of their vehicles managing to behead two of the pursuers (a cool effect that is a riff on a not dissimilar scene in the 1977 film and is led down by so-so opticals).

One of the more absurdly improbably facets of this film’s action sequences was also pointed out by my viewing companion – Echternkamp has The Car running over all of its victims whereas in reality the Chrysler 300 SRT8 has only a 5.6 inch clearance (the running area between the ground and its undercarriage) and would not be able to drive over people without experiencing a noticeable bump every time it does so.

UFO International is a production company headed by Phillip Roth. Their other films include Darkdrive (1996), Total Reality (1997), Interceptors (1999), Storm (1999), Deep Core (2000), Epoch (2000), Falcon Down (2000), Mindstorm (2000), Python (2000), Lost Voyage (2001), Shark Hunter (2001), Antibody (2002), Dark Descent (2002), Hyper Sonic (2002), Interceptor Force 2 (2002), Pythons (2002), Dark Waters (2003), Deep Shock (2003), Dragonfighter (2003), Maximum Velocity (2003), Warnings/Silent Warnings (2003), Boa vs Python (2004), Darklight (2004), Dragon Storm (2004), Phantom Force (2004), Post Impact (2004), Alien Siege (2005), Crimson Force (2005), Locusts: The 8th Plague (2005), Manticore (2005), Path of Destruction (2005), S.S. Doomtrooper (2006), Reign of the Gargoyles (2007), Copperhead (2008), Ghost Voyage (2008), Doomsday (2009), Ghost Town (2009), The Grudge 3 (2009), Star Runners (2009), Arctic Predator (2010), Elimination (2010), Lake Placid 3 (2010), Triassic Attack (2010), Cold Fusion (2011), Miami Magma (2011), Morlocks (2011), Rage of the Yeti (2011), Super Eruption (2011), Super Tanker (2011), Black Forest (2012), Boogeyman (2012), Lake Placid: The Final Chapter (2012), True Bloodthirst (2012), Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (2012), Deadly Descent (2013), Invasion Roswell (2013), Jet Stream (2013), Robocroc (2013), Super Collider (2013), Crystal Skulls (2014), Firequake (2014), Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014), Lake Placid vs Anaconda (2015), Roboshark (2015), Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018) and Doom: Annihilation (2019).

( Winner Worst Film in this site’s Top 10 Films of 2019 list ). -->

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'The Car: Road To Revenge' Isn't Quite The Sequel You're Expecting

( Welcome to  DTV Descent , a series that explores the weird and wild world of direct-to-video sequels to theatrically released movies. In this edition, we take a road trip with a stylized sequel to a cult favorite horror flick. )

Some sequels feel like no-brainers while others make no sense at all, and then you have something like The Car: Road to Revenge ... which hits both of those extremes at ninety miles per hour.

On the one hand, 1977's The Car is a fun little horror romp about a killer car mowing people down in a small western town. It's not fancy or all that impressive necessarily, but it's a good time at the movies. The film knows exactly what it is – a land-shark blend of both Duel and  Jaws  – and it embraces the horror and thrills of it all. It has become something of a cult favorite over the forty-two years since its release, and as it ends with the car prowling the streets of Los Angeles a sequel always felt like a possibility.

But no one could have expected this. Keep reading for a look at the self-proclaimed "stylized sequel" to The Car .

The Beginning

Two bicyclists are chased by an ominous black sedan and driven off the road to their deaths. A horn-playing hitchhiker is run over by the same car a short time later. This small town's police force isn't used to such blatant brutalities, and when the sheriff is killed next it's up to Officer Wade Parent to stop the hulking metal beast from lowering his town's population any further. Suspicions arise as to who could be driving the car, but when an old Navajo woman suggests there's no one behind the wheel all hell breaks loose. The car growls, honks its horn, and even drives through a house – a scene that clearly went on to influence 1984's awesome killer pig movie Razorback  – before the acting sheriff and the other townspeople finally end the carnage. Get it? Car nage. Anyway, they bury the son of a bitch and watch as a giant demonic face appears in the smoky cloud above.

The DTV Plot

It's the future, Blade Runner on a non-existent budget, and violence fills the neon-lit streets. A district attorney guilty of his own crimes of grift and bribery pushes for stiffer penalties and quicker executions for the "real" criminals. How quick? A man is convicted in court, a tube drops over his body, and he explodes within. So, yeah, pretty quick. A local gang murders the D.A. in pursuit of an encryption chip, but when his body plummets from his office window onto his new car's hood his blood slips into its cracks bringing the vehicle to angry life. It begins seeking out and killing the gang members. Can rogue cop Rainer stop it? And more importantly, does he even want to?

Talent Shift

A surly James Brolin fights off the devil's wheels in The Car , and he's joined by a roster of familiar faces in supporting roles including Ronny Cox, R.G. Armstrong, John Rubinstein, Kathleen Lloyd, Kim Richards, and more. Brolin's no stranger to genre fare with films like Skyjacked (1972) and Westworld (1973) on his resume, and two years after this film he faced off against Satan once again in The Amityville Horror (1979). Director Elliot Silverstein also dabbled in horror ( Nightmare Honeymoon , 1974) before strapping in for The Car , but he's better known for a pair of westerns –  Cat Ballou (1965) and A Man Called Horse (1970). The film has three writers, and while that's often a bad sign you'd be hard-pressed to argue with their filmographies which include favorites like The Gauntlet (1977), Code of Silence (1985), Pale Rider (1985), and more. These are some fun genre efforts, and they also wrote my beloved slice of Canuxploitation Murder By Phone (1982)!

The sequel also stars some people you might recognize including a returning Ronny Cox and TV veteran Grant Bowler. Director/co-writer G.J. Echternkamp and co-writers Michael Tabb and Matt Yamas***a aren't as lucky with the most notable film between them being 2017's Death Race 2050 . That's very fitting, and we'll get to why below.

How the Sequel Respects the Original

Well, there's a car. And it's killing people. It's unfortunately the DA's possessed sports car for most of the movie, but – spoiler! – the original 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III black coupe returns for the third act. (Or at least a reasonable facsimile of one anyway...)

As with the original, we do also get one pretty spectacular car kill, and while it's not quite on par with the drive through the walls and rooms of a house it is guaranteed to leave a smile on your face. A bounty is declared on the killer car – don't ask – leading all manner of Mad Max -like rejects to chase after it. They set up a roadblock complete with guys standing up through the roofs to fire mounted machine guns, but the car is one step ahead. It races towards them and takes a sharp turn that sends it into the air and a barrel roll decapitating them as it goes. It's ridiculous and something the film needs far more of. There are a few bloody kills via non-car weapons, and they help make the film a passable watch for dedicated viewers with low bars and/or high thresholds.

How the Sequel S***s on the Original

The original movie is a straightforward  Jaws riff with a supernatural bent as a large, fast-moving killing machine arrives in town with no explanation, proceeds to slaughter locals and spread terror, and is then itself killed by a cop and others. The lack of reason and motivation raise the horror and suspense as anyone can bite it at any time. Even the suggestion that the car's motivation was powered by hell itself is left more than a little open-ended. Road to Revenge eschews all of that and instead gives us an even simpler revenge setup devoid of suspense or mystery – a guy is murdered and is now out for revenge as a slick, self-driving automobile. It lacks an interesting hook in its main plot and instead becomes just another generic tale.

Narrative aside, what's the appeal of this near-future setting? Trick question, there is none. While the original dropped viewers into a familiar town with recognizable characters and relationships, the sequel lays a dark digital filter over it all while offering cheap evidence of the future in holograms, minor gadgetry, and gang members you will only find in low-budget post-apocalyptic fare. Seriously, the tough guys here consist of a  cyborg, a cowboy, a punk, a guy dressed like 1980's Adam Ant, another who constantly combines his A Clockwork Orange /Flavor Flav cosplay outfits, and their boss – a British surgeon with white eyes and a habit of forcing biological/mechanical mods onto people.

Far too much of the film is focused on their antics and efforts to retrieve the encryption chip as well as making it clear the D.A. is a bit of a prick himself. He calls poor people "filth" and tells his ex he won't stop coming for her until she's his again. Still, after he dies he actually saves her twice, in the form of the car which lowers its windows afterward to blare a love song, but that makes the killer car a force of good which is definitely not what the original film delivered. Granted, we also get a few bloody demises via both practical and CG bloodwork including an eye-catching head pop, some t actically trained female assassins, a girl fight, villains in top hats with southern drawls, a woman with flame-thrower gloves, a guy with a finger drill... and the return of Ronny Cox, albeit as a different character, who finally brings the original car into the mix to draw a single tenuous connection to the earlier movie.

Conclusion 

Per the Death Race 2050 mention above, The Car: Road to Revenge feels like it was filmed in between camera setups of that direct to video stinker. To be clear, it wasn't, as the former was filmed in Peru and the latter in Bulgaria, but the feel of the film's world is very much the same. It's rundown in a way that screams set availability rather than artistic design, the performances are exaggerated for effect, and the focus seems more on car action and topless strippers than on creating an engaging story or characters. It not only lacks the horror of the original but it never even aims for it, so fans of the earlier movie should probably avoid this one – unless you're also a fan of choppy car action, CG shenanigans, and Ronny Cox.

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Film / The Car: Road to Revenge

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The Car: Road to Revenge is 2018 American science fiction horror feature film written and directed by G.J. Echternkamp. The movie stars Grant Bowler, Kathleen Munroe, Martin Hancock, Micah Balfour, Burt Grinstead, Nina Bergman, Jamie Bamber , and Ronny Cox . The film is a “stylized” sequel to The Car .

In a dilapidated Cyberpunk city plagued by crime and corruption, unscrupulous District Attorney James S. Caddock is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance . The eerie driverless car embarks on a vicious rampage exacting revenge on the criminals who murdered him.

Tropes used in The Car: Road to Revenge include:

• 20 Minutes into the Future : The film is set at some unspecified time in the future that has some futuristic technology, primarily in the field of cybernetics. However, things like fashion, firearms, vehicles, etc. seem largely unchanged.
• And I Must Scream : At the end, Caddock’s spirit is still alive in the car despite being pushed down a cliff into a lake . However, Daria had ripped out the car’s CPU, rendering it immobile so Caddock is stuck in a lake, fully conscious, with no way to move, unless the car’s wreck is dredged up .
• Action Girl : Daria grew up in the worst neighbourhood in the city and, although more refined now, has lost none of the skills she learnt there. She is an expert shot and can hold her own in a hand-to-hand fight against the worst street scum the city has to offer, even if they are cybernetically enhanced.
• Arm Cannon : Pyromaniac Ash has a flamethrower built into her arm.
• Automated Automobiles : the spirit of a murdered man possesses his Cool Car and the car goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge .
• Batter Up! : Rainer hands a baseball bat to the girl Tinkerman was abducting and lets her smash him in the head with it.
• Big Bad Ensemble : District Attorney James Caddock is the spirit possessing the titular Sinister Car and uses it to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge , while Talen is the leader of The Night, the gang of Human Traffickers who killed Caddock and set off his revenge.
• Blinded by the Light : Rainer blinds the albino Talen by spinning round a corner and shining a flashlight directly in his eyes.
• Blood from the Mouth : Since most of the Car's victims are killed via either crushing or blunt-force trauma, this is a very common occurrence.
• Bloodier and Gorier : Hoo boy. Unlike it's predecessor which at most featured a streak of blood on a stone wall, this movie does NOT skimp on the gore; among other things a man's face is badly burned and heavily wounded, said man falls at least 30 stories and splatters on the title car, another man gets shot point-blank in the head and a piece of it goes flying off complete with blood spray, two heads are crushed resulting in blood splattering on the camera at least twice, one throat-slitting with plenty of blood, a man slowly crawling from a car wreck with a compound fracture and a trail of blood behind him crushed from the groin up during which his ribcage is crushed and blood sprays from his torso and his head also follows suit... all well before the one-hour mark!
• Booze Flamethrower : Daria douses the ADA in medical alcohol and acts as if she is about to set him on fire. She takes a swig from the bottle and takes Talen's lighter. She lights the lighter but then spits the booze out across the flame and into Talen's eye.
• Car Cushion : The gang throws Caddock out of his office window and he lands of top his brand new Lazarus luxury sedan. Somehow, this allows his soul to enter the car and control it .
• Carnival of Killers : Not as classy as many other examples of this trope, but Talen offers bounties on anyone who brings him the car, the girl, or the chip. As these bounties include free access to his arsenal of weapons, and free cybernetic enhancements, every gang in the city mobilizes in an attempt to claim them.
• Car Fu : The possessed car makes most of its kills by running its victims over.
• City Noir : Set 20 Minutes into the Future in a city so crime-ridden that death sentences are carried out in the courtroom immediately after they are pronounced. It is mentioned that this 'innovation' was introduced by D.A. Caddock, implying that the rest of the world is not as bad as this city.
• Cool Car : The Lazarus was a top of the line luxury car even before it became a sentient murder machine. It’s bulletproof, its chassis is durable to survive multiple impacts and Caddock’s body falling on it, and it has butterfly doors .
• Cowboy Cop : Detective Rainer. The first scene of the movie has his commanding officer ordering him not to engage with Tinkerman until backup arrives. Rainer immediately ignores the order.
• Crazy Jealous Guy : Caddock is extremely possessive of Daria, even though she broke up with him some time ago. This carries over to the car that his spirit possesses after he is murdered. When Daria sleeps with Rainer, the car attempts to kill both of them.
• Dark Is Not Evil : However, Rainer and Daria wear dark clothing as well but they’re the heroes of the movie.
• Dead Star Walking : Jamie Bamber as Caddock, even though he technically comes back to life when his vengeful spirit takes over the car. If you know his career , this shouldn't surprise you.
• Distracted by the Sexy : The cop assigned to watch Daria's house is distracted by the sight of her undressing in front of a window. The point where she notices him and draws the curtain is the point where he is grabbed by the gang and has a drill shoved through his skull .
• The End... Or Is It? : The film ends with Daria pushing the burnt-out remains of the car off the edge of the cliff and into the lake. The final shot of the movie shows the car sitting on the bottom of the lake. And then its headlights turn on...
• Evilutionary Biologist : Talen believes that he is perfecting humanity and giving it the tools he needs to survive. He secures test subjects through kidnapping and human trafficking, and pays his gang by installing cybernetic upgrades in them.
• Evil vs. Evil : The two antagonists, Caddock and Talen are both trying to kill each other.
• Near the end, Daria stabs Talen in the eye with a scalpel, but he survives because his eye’s robotic.
• Firing in the Air a Lot : When Talen announces the bounty on the car, the chip and the girl, the assembled street scum of the city show their pleasure by firing fully automatic weapons into the air. Given they are inside a warehouse at the time, it's a wonder no one was killed.
• Flamethrower Backfire : Rainer shoots the flamethrower Ash has built into her arm ; causing her to go up in flames.
• Forklift Fu : Rainer uses a forklift to hoist the car's front wheels off the ground so it can't gain traction: leaving it a sitting duck for the bomb set up by Daria.
• Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex : After barely surviving an encounter with the eponymous car, Rainer and Daria have a Slap-Slap-Kiss moment that immediately segues into sex.
• Half the Man He Used to Be : Happens to Talen when he is rammed by the eponymous car during the final confrontation. His upper half is lying inside the car, cut off at the windscreen, while his lower half sprawls on the road and is run over.
• Haunted Technology : A possessed car goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge .
• Hero Stole My Bike : Rainer attempts to commandeer a citizen's dirt bike to escape the murderous car. When the man resists, Rainer punches him in the face and takes the bike anyway.
• This is actually a subversion. They are requesting information on The Night. The broker does give the name Talen but is killed before he can give any more info.
• It Kind of Looks Like a Face : There are multiple shots of the eponymous car where the headlights look like glowing eyes and the grille like a grinning mouth.
• Made of Iron : The Lazarus One is bulletproof and strong enough to survive getting torn apart, set on fire and then blown up with a bomb.
• Man on Fire : Ash goes up in flames as a result of a Flamethrower Backfire . Later, Talen uses a Reusable Lighter Toss to set the ADA on fire after Daria douses him in medical alcohol.
• Meaningful Name : The Lazarus luxury sedan has a rather fitting name, given that a man by the name of Lazarus of Bethany was raised from the dead by Jesus in The Bible .
• My Car Hates Me : One of the gang is driving away from the car when his own car stalls on a bridge: leaving him easy prey for the Lazarus.
• Mythology Gag : Caddock's car is repaired in the third act using parts from the custom Lincoln Continental of the first film, giving it a similar appearance for the remainder of the movie.
• Pillow Pistol : Talen's gang attempt to abduct Daria from her house, but are thwarted when she pulls a Hand Cannon out from under the pillow and shoots several of them.
• Punk in the Trunk : At the start of the movie, Rainer finds a kidnapped woman Bound and Gagged in the trunk of Tinkerman's car.
• Pyromaniac : Ash has a flamethrower built into her arm and loves to watch things burn.
• The Rat : Rainer and Daria visit an information broker to gain info on The Night. However, just as the broker starts to talk, he is shot by Talen's gang .
• Remake Cameo : Ronny Cox, who played Luke Johnson in the original film, plays a mechanic who repairs Caddock’s car after Talen’s gang wrecks it. Also, the custom Lincoln Continental Mark III makes an appearance as a donor car the mechanic used to repair Caddock .
• Reusable Lighter Toss : Almost as an afterthought, Talen tosses his lighter into the lap of the ADA who is soaked in alcohol, turning him into a Man on Fire .
• Revolvers Are Just Better : Daria uses a Ruger G100 for most of the movie.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge : After Caddock is murdered, his soul comes back inhabiting his car to take revenge on those who killed him.
• Sentient Vehicle : The 'monster' of the film is a luxury sedan possessed by the vengeful spirit of a murdered man.
• Sequel Hook : The film ends with Daria pushing the burnt-out remains of the car off the edge of the cliff and into the lake. The final shot of the movie shows the car sitting on the bottom of the lake. And then its headlights turn on...
• Slap-Slap-Kiss : Rainer and Daria have an emotionally charged conversation about their lost loved ones. At the end of it, Rainer invites Daria to him (as a way of testing her combat skills). He catches the punch, and then the two of them kiss and fall into bed. Doubles as Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex , as they have just survived an attack from the homicidal automobile.
• Slashed Throat : Mila tries to escape when the gang storms Daria's house, but is caught and has her throat slit.
• Take Over the City : The Big Bad Talen is an Evilutionary Biologist seeking to create an army from the gangs of the city: cybernetically enhancing them and arming them to seize control of the city.
• There Was a Door : The car deliberately smashes through a wall into a building to kill Henry.
• This Is a Drill : One of Talen's gang has a drill implanted in his hand. He uses it to inflict an Eye Scream on Caddock, and later to kill the cop on watch outside Daria's house.
• Undisclosed Funds : Rainer and Daria visit an information broker and are haggling over the price. Getting sick of this, Daria scribbles something down on a card, says this is their final offer, and hands it to the broker. The broker glances at the card and immediately agrees.
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• Vehicular Assault : The gangs of the city use cars and motorbikes to corral the eponymous car into an old quarry where Talen can kill it.
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The Car: Road to Revenge (2019)

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Heading to the nearest town to collect the bounty, they’re hit with not one but two surprises. The town is run by William Slade (George Nelson, The Last Gunfighter, Vampire Slayers), the man who killed their mother. And their brothers Brodie (Chade Green) and Pete (Aaron Ginn-Forsberg, Western X, How to Make a Deal With the Devil) are working for him.

Kellen Garner not only stars in Road to Revenge he co-directed it with Christopher Sheffield (The Unaccompanied Runaways, Run for Your Life) and wrote the script from a story by co-star George Nelson. He’s obviously going for an old-school Western feel, something along the lines of The Sons of Katie Elder.

Unfortunately, along with the plot device of four bickering and estranged siblings forced to put their differences aside to seek vengeance, he also copied that film’s epic length. And while he’s good, he’s no Henry Hathaway or Harry Essex. The result is a film that while good feels like a first cut that is in bad need of editing to tighten it up.

The story of Lucy and Travis runs separately from that of Brody and Pete for the first hour of Road to Revenge. This means by the time the film should be heading into its final act there’s still almost an hour to go. And the dialogue isn’t good enough to hold the audience that long, and the budget wasn’t big enough to fill the time with nonstop action.

The action scenes we do get are a nicely staged mix of gunfights, brawls and even a bare-knuckles boxing match. The climactic showdown between the Royals and Slade and his men is a solid note for Road to Revenge to end on. There are plenty of bullets flying and bodies dropping, which helps to make up for a lot of what I had to sit through to get to it.

Unfortunately, the attempts at character-driven scenes between the bursts of violence don’t work nearly as well. Road to Revenge never really made me feel a family bond between the leads. We get one flashback to the day of the killings, with some child actors who don’t resemble the adult characters, and that’s it. There’s no real effort put into building their past, so the scenes of them trying to reconcile and work together didn’t work for me.

And, while it may be a minor quibble, shooting a fleeing man in the back is certainly acceptable behaviour for the protagonist of a gritty Italian Western, but it feels out of place in a film that wants to emulate Hollywood’s version of the frontier. Especially as Travis seems to enjoy doing it repeatedly.

While it may not be the Western I was hoping for, Road to Revenge is the best of the low-budget ones I’ve seen since Ti West’s In a Valley of Violence . Vision Films will release Road to Revenge on VOD in the US and Canada on November 16th. You can check their website or the film’s Facebook page for more details.

Where to watch Road To Revenge

Share your love, related posts, operation black ops (2023) review, review: 8 graves (2020), timecop (1994) review, 5 thoughts on “road to revenge (2020) review”.

I’ve never even heard of this but I love a good western. Might give it a look.

I hadn’t heard of it either until I was offered the screener

Just watched and and it was pretty good thanks to Megan Benett.

Well it’s not unwatchable, but sure would be nice to see a real bank rolled Western again…..those were the days.

There seems to be enough interest in them among indie film companies, even bigger ones like Lionsgate are releasing them, that one of the studios will probably make one in the near future. Even if it’s for their streaming service,

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The Car: Road to Revenge

• An unscrupulous District Attorney is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance.
• In a dilapidated cyberpunk city plagued by crime and corruption, an unscrupulous District Attorney is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance. The eerie driver-less car embarks on a vicious rampage exacting revenge on the criminals who murdered him. The Car: Road to Revenge is the stylized sequel to the unconventional horror cult classic The Car (1977), and features an homage to the original with the return of Ronny Cox [Link=nm0001074as] the Mechanic?. — Craig Holmes

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‘Road House’ Review: This Remake Amps Up the Action

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a pro fighter turned bouncer at a juke joint in the Florida Keys, taking on Patrick Swayze’s role in the original.

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By Glenn Kenny

The 1989 blockbuster “Road House” was something of a pastiche. It delivered disreputable B-picture thrills with big-picture production value. The lead actor Patrick Swayze, playing a philosophizing roughneck, smirked with unshakable confidence while breaking arms and jaws, as cars and buildings blew up real good around him. The action was served up with glossy studio polish.

Hence, a remake of the film, some might argue, is destined to be a pastiche of a pastiche. But as we move further into the 21st century, we find the notion of authenticity ever more devalued. And who needs it when you’ve got Doug Liman directing the whole thing? He is, after all, the J. Robert Oppenheimer of lunatic action set pieces (“The Bourne Identity,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “Edge of Tomorrow” to name a few).

Taking on Swayze’s role, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the pro fighter turned bouncer Elwood Dalton, here protecting a juke joint that sits on a valuable piece of real estate in the Florida Keys. At his most winning despite his character’s lethal nature, Gyllenhaal keeps up the one-liners and drollery. In lieu of Swayze’s Zenlike musings, he gives us dry inquiries about whether his challengers have medical insurance before pummeling and delivering them to a hospital.

This movie delivers a lot of the same kicks as the first, but with contemporary tuneups like a villain played by Conor McGregor, the Ultimate Fighting Championship star who’s first seen stark naked, except for shoes and socks (so he can carry his phone). Though two hours long, the movie moves as swiftly as a greased ferret through a Habitrail and delivers hallucinatory action highs for its extended climax.

All this and a pretty funny “The Third Man” reference too.

Road House Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. Watch on Prime Video.

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The car: road to revenge.

2019 Directed by G.J. Echternkamp

In a dilapidated cyberpunk city plagued by crime and corruption, an unscrupulous District Attorney is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance. The eerie driver-less car embarks on a vicious rampage exacting revenge on the criminals who murdered him. The Car: Road to Revenge is the stylized sequel to the unconventional horror cult classic The Car (1977), and features an homage to the original with the return of Ronny Cox as the Mechanic.

Grant Bowler Kathleen Munroe Martin Hancock Micah Balfour Burt Grinstead Nina Bergman Jamie Bamber Ronny Cox Nathan Cooper

Director Director

G.J. Echternkamp

Additional Directing Add. Directing

Stanimir Stamatov

Producer Producer

Jeffrey Beach

Writers Writers

G.J. Echternkamp Matt Yamashita Michael Tabb

Casting Casting

Gillian Hawser Jeff Gerrard

Editors Editors

G.J. Echternkamp John Gilbert

Cinematography Cinematography

Martin Chichov

Production Design Production Design

Brendan Turrill

Stunts Stunts

Dessy Slavova

Composer Composer

Frederik Wiedmann

BUFO Universal 1440 Entertainment

Releases by Date

08 jan 2019, 15 mar 2021, releases by country.

89 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Ian West ★★ 9

I’m fascinated that 1977’s The Car  got a 2019 sequel. Dopey fun, neat Ronny Cox cameo but most of you will probably hate this.

Review by Flynch ★★½

Wenn jemand ermordet wird, kann es schon mal vorkommen, dass er zurückkommt. Der eine kommt dann als Krähe retour, der andere als …….. Auto. Ein Revenge-Movie der etwas anderen Art, ein Cocktail aus Interceptor,  Christine, Robocop, Mad Max, the Crow usw., fein säu(b)erlich mit einer Prise Cyberpunk versetzt, abgeschmeckt mit einigen TV-Stars (Defiance, CSI:NY, Strike Back) und einem Cameo garniert.  Die Kamera und der Score waren gar nicht mal so schlecht, das Gorehappening war handmade und überraschenderweise wurde auf den Einsatz von CGI fast verzichtet. Noch überraschter war ich aber von mir selbst, denn so schlecht fand ich das Teil jetzt gar nicht. Eine Retroreise zurück in die 90er, mit einigen langweiligen Passagen, aber dennoch, abhängig von (meiner) der Tagesverfassung, kann ein Blick vom Trashfan riskiert werden. Für Fans der billigeren Gangart und Freunde von zusammengeklauten Ideen. P.S. Da THE CAR (1977) einer meiner Lieblingsfilme ist, kann und will ich hier keinen Zusammenhang sehen. Punkt.

Review by Sofa Sinema ★★½

Works better if you pretend it’s like the seventh DTV sequel to The Car franchise we never got. Chop shop junk with some gratuitous gore, a faux cyberpunk aesthetic, and a dash of vulgar auteurism behind the wheel. 5.4/10

Review by Kaijuman ★★ 1

The Car (1977) was a neat little supernatural flick with a cool killer car. It’s a lot of fun and worth a watch if you enjoy low-budget fare from the 70’s. (Who doesn’t) 

But who could have guessed that little b-movie would spawn a DTV sequel 42 years later? Seriously, this is a sequel to a movie that came out over 40 years ago. Why? Besides me and my Dad, who’s even seen The Car? It’s a mystery.

This also takes place in a cyberpunk future for no logical reason. Also the car is more of a vigilante in this rather than a remorseless killer. The Car is possessed by some clingy douche who stalks an ex-girlfriend when it’s not…

Review by colin... ½

My review for The Car: Road to Revenge is as follows:

This was worse than The Kissing Booth 2.

Interpret this information as you will.

Review by Mr. DuLac ★★

The CPU this baby has, it can practically drive itself. -Caddock

The original 1977 film features James Brolin as a sheriff battling a possessed car in a small town. 42 years later G.J. Echternkamp decided to make a cyberpunk sequel to that film.

It has aspects of being slightly futuristic despite some characters using old iPhones. That’s the kind of film it is. Cyberpunk without the budget to do it.

There’s one small connection to the original film and it involves the filmmakers convincing Ronny Cox to appear in it. He isn’t playing the same character as the original, but he’s part of how it connects to it.

Now if they would have been able to convince James Brolin to…

Review by Saint_Hooligan ★★★

Trash Fire of 2023/2024 72/89

72. 03/01/24 Watch a movie Kaijuman has tagged direct-to-video

The setting is dystopian, and the car in question is a high-tech "smart" car that somehow absorbs the soul of its slain owner, a DA out to clean up the town. The car then goes after those that caused his death. The car is a 4 door Chrysler 300. A plain old black CHRYSLER 300 with Lambo doors that visibly flop around. This Chrysler has a cheesy chrome front bumper, orange peel paint and a blacked out front and rear end. They probably used spray paint or black tape. It's that bad. No horn, no eerie terrifying sound, no ominous look, no scary soundtrack. The front…

Review by Vern ★★ 1

You know how it is. Sometimes a car with no driver shows up in a desert town and tries to run over everybody and James Brolin stops it but then in a cyberpunk future there are gangs of cyborg punks who kill a corrupt D.A. and he possesses his car and stalks his ex-girlfriend and later Ronny Cox is back but playing a different character and he uses the remains of the original The Car to repair the new The Car.

FULL REVIEW AT OUTLAWVERN.COM

Review by DopeAssGhost ★½

THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE (2019) "An unscrupulous District Attorney is savagely murdered and tossed out of a building onto his brand new car. Mysteriously, the District Attorney and his car come back to life as a single being with a thirst for vengeance."

To actually call this a sequel to the original The Car (1977) is a travesty beyond repair! I don't hate this film like I noticed a lot of critics seem to, but I must admit I was severely disappointed. Sure, I knew it was going to be an in-name sequel only (I mean it's 42 years too late to be anything but) but still I held some hope for entertainment value. It's completely schlocky, a cashgrab…

Review by Jerome1994 ★★½

So some how The Car (1977) got a sequel, okay yes this sequel is very pointless. But I have to give credit where credit is due this movie is surprisingly not awful. The movie does have some horrendous special effects in it but that’s the only thing I would say is flat out terrible. Everything else is what you would expect from a straight to DVD movie, the acting is over the top but at the same time it’s pretty fun! The same can be said about the writing it’s definitely not good but it’s a lot of fun, it was nice to see Ronny Cox in this one as well! Something I also kinda liked about this movie is…

Review by Curtis ★★ 8

Less a sequel and more of an echo of the 1977 film.

It has a lot of the more irritating earmarks of modern, straight-to-video cheap flicks, but by the end, I did find myself somewhat engaged. Though, there's one CGI stunt that almost pulled me completely out of the movie.

I can't decide if setting this in a generic cyberpunk future is the silliest idea ever, or the third silliest idea ever.

Review by Kevin Cormier ★★

After a dislikable and powerful district attorney is murdered and thrown out of a window into his fancy new car, his spirit takes over the car and seeks revenge on those that have wronged him.   This wasn’t too bad, had it’s moments of gore and some over the top bad guys which were almost campy, but the lead actress Kathleen Munroe was good and kept my attention.

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Movie Reviews

This recycled 'road house' can't capture the b-movie spirit of the original.

Justin Chang

Jake Gyllenhaal is a former UFC star who becomes a bouncer in Road House. Laura Radford/Prime Video hide caption

Jake Gyllenhaal is a former UFC star who becomes a bouncer in Road House.

There's been so much conflict behind the scenes of the new Road House remake that the fighting on-screen almost pales by comparison. Last month, R. Lance Hill, a writer on the original 1989 film, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the companies behind the remake, MGM Studios and its parent, Amazon Studios. Meanwhile, Doug Liman, the director of the remake, has publicly blasted Amazon for bypassing theaters and giving the movie a streaming-only release.

I can't help but empathize with Liman. His Road House isn't a great movie by any stretch, but what pleasures it has are best experienced on a big screen in a packed house. The original Road House did decent theatrical business back in 1989, before becoming a cult classic on home video. Watching it today, you can see why: It's dumb and satisfying, a straight-no-chaser shot of sex and violence. And Patrick Swayze remains irresistible as Dalton, a strong, silent, frequently bare-chested bar bouncer who gets sucked into a crowd-pleasing maelstrom of small-town mayhem.

Movie Interviews

Jake gyllenhaal on throwing (and taking) punches: 'it's very primal'.

The remake, written by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry, mostly sticks to the original template. In this version of the story, Dalton, played by Jake Gyllenhaal , is a former Ultimate Fighting Championship star who's fallen on tough times. He's run out of options when he's offered a job cooling down the riff-raff at a roadhouse in the Florida Keys. When he shows up, he teaches the other bouncers to de-escalate the violence that flares up night after night among the bar's very mean, very drunk patrons.

Even so, Gyllenhaal's Dalton feels like less of a pacifist than Swayze's, and he's not afraid to stir up trouble. At one point, a nasty biker gang shows up and starts wreaking havoc inside the roadhouse. Dalton lures them outside and gives them the chance to walk away. They mock him, clearly not knowing what they're dealing with.

This isn't the first time Gyllenhaal has played an ultra-shredded fighter, as he did in the 2015 boxing melodrama Southpaw . His Dalton is a pretty standard-issue protagonist, complete with a troubled past that haunts his dreams. But Gyllenhaal, who's always brought a touch of wild energy even to his good-guy roles, makes those demons more convincing than you'd expect.

None of the other actors are especially persuasive, except Jessica Williams as the roadhouse's tough-minded owner. As a snarling hit man who tries to take Dalton down, the Irish professional fighter Conor McGregor does make an impression, in the same way a wrecking ball makes an impression.

Probably my favorite performance is given by a hungry crocodile who makes short work of one of the more annoying members of the cast and gives the movie some authentic Florida flavor. Most of the other key characters have been recycled from the first film, from the flirty doctor who gives Dalton more than strictly medical attention to the wealthy villain who has his own designs on the roadhouse.

But for all its attempts to recapture the B-movie spirit of the original, this Road House winds up stuck somewhere in the middle, caught between unironic '80s homage and a more wised-up contemporary sensibility. In the first Road House , there was nearly as much free-flowing sex as there was violence; here, the violence has been amped up to even more bone-crunching extremes, while the sole instance of nudity is played strictly for laughs. And some of the dialogue feels too arch and knowing, like when a friendly local compares Dalton to a character in a Western.

As we've seen from his earlier movies, the best of which include The Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow , Liman is a more-than-capable director of action. The bar brawls here are well choreographed and cleanly shot, and the fighting encompasses everything from intimate fisticuffs to grander-scale set-pieces.

But there's something too artificial about the action, with its often distractingly obvious CGI touch-ups. I saw Road House at a screening in a theater, and it's possible the technical flaws were magnified on the big screen in a way that they won't be on your TV. Even so, it's too bad that audiences won't get a chance to decide for themselves.

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Road House: 10 best scenes from the classic movie, ranked

T he 1980s are known for cheesy but amazing action movies . Actors like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger , Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Steven Seagal became legends because of that era. Without their contribution, the action genre wouldn’t be where it is today.

Patrick Swayze isn’t often mentioned among the great action heroes of that time. It may be because he starred in films such as Dirty Dancing and Ghost . Nevertheless, he was the lead in one of the greatest bad/good movies ever, Road House . Jake Gyllenhaal’s remake, also titled Road House, was entertaining, but it’s not the original. It lacked the charm of its predecessor. That's what this article is all about. It will highlight what made Road House special, looking at its 10 best moments.

Honorable mentions:

• A polar bear fell on me
• Stay on break
• Firing the bar staff
• Beating Brad Wesley
• Bigfoot smash!

10. Pain don't hurt

After getting cut during a bar fight, Dalton goes to the hospital. Standard stuff. What happens next isn't.

First, he has physical copies of his medical records. No one walks around with that. Even in the 1980s. Second, not taking something for the pain while getting staples to close a wound is bad enough. Following it up by saying, “Pain don’t hurt” made it a ridiculously badass moment, giving us an instantly classic quote in the process.

Lastly, he made time to flirt with the doctor without being creepy. Dalton is a true legend.

9. Car on fire

The final action scene of any big time movie should be a memorable one and Road House delivered. The fight between Dalton and Brad Wesley’s goons started with a car driving by itself and then catching fire.

How was it running? Dalton pushed the gas down with the knife used to kill his mentor. It was an absurd moment that had to be mentioned. 

8. Do you know who that is?

The fact that a bar and club bouncer was a national celebrity in an era without social media is hilarious. It also speaks to Dalton’s reputation.

People started talking when Dalton walked into the Double Deuce (the club). Especially the antagonists. They heard who he was and knew it was over. Being that famous via word of mouth is incredible and funny. Dalton's reputation precedes him, and deservedly so.

7. Buying a terrible car

Dalton had been fixing up cars for a long time. Enough to know people were going to hate him. This always leads to his property being damaged. That’s why he bought a shoddy car when he got into town. The audience quickly sees how smart this is. After his first night, his tires are stabbed. Later, a stop sign was thrown through the window.

Dalton gets high marks for foresight. It makes me wonder how many times he’s done this.

6. Break a leg

One of the many goons in this movie tried a sneak attack on Dalton and quickly found out why that was a bad idea. Unfortunately for them, Dalton always sees it coming. In this case, he notices a blade in someone’s boot. When they try to kick him, Dalton grabs their leg, breaks their ankle, and drags them out of the Double Duece by their leg. The latter action added insult to an obvious and painful injury.

5. I had it under control

Dalton spends most of the movie outnumbered during fights. Usually, his coworkers intervene. This particular time, they’re inside the bar while he’s getting attacked outside. Thankfully, Dalton’s mentor Wade Garrett comes in and saves the day.

Apparently, like Dalton, Wade Garrett has a reputation. When the fight is over, Cody introduces Garrett. Everyone gasps like they've just met Elvis. This writer would like to know what the bouncer information train looks like.

4. Walk it out

The first time Dalton interacts with an unruly patron in Road House , he’s calm. The guy wanted to fight, and Dalton said they should take it outside. After walking him out, Dalton smiles and re-enters the bar while his would-be opponent looks foolish. There was no fight. He outsmarted the guy with ease. It was simple and beautiful.

This was a great way of showing us all who Dalton was and how he could diffuse situations around him. Like I said, it was simple, but very effective.

As a former bouncer and security worker, this moment spoke to me. Dalton tells his bouncers, “Be nice. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both be nice. I want you to remember that it's a job. It's nothing personal." 

Everything he said made sense. People will say rude and outlandish things, but it’s rarely personal. Even if it is, be nice. Stooping to their level means they've won. However, when you’re nice and don’t overreact you’re victorious. They wanted a reaction and you didn’t give it to them.

2. Throat rip

The first time you hear that Dalton ripped a guy’s throat out, you don’t believe it. It’s likely a rumor that started after he punched someone in the neck. As time went on the legend grew. Eventually, Jimmy finds out the reports are true.

After a brutal fight in the movie, Dalton finishes the encounter by tearing Jimmy’s throat out, proving that sometimes you should believe what you hear. As big a moment as this one was, the crazier part came next: Doctor Clay checked Jimmy’s pulse. I think he’s dead, doc.

1. The town gets revenge

The action hero usually defeats the final boss before the credits roll. After spending the film or TV show fighting everyone on route to the big bad, it's only right that their hard work ultimately pays off. It didn’t exactly happen that way in Road House . Yes, Dalton defeated the villain but the right people got the final blow.

Throughout Road House , people were forced to bow down to Brad Wesley. He ruined the town and people’s lives and he even killed some of the citizens. It’s only right that the people of Jasper, Missouri were the ones who got the emphatic final blow, killing Wesley. Thankfully, the creative team thought so too.

This was a fitting end for Brad Wesley and a satisfying conclusion for the movie.

Have you seen the original Road House? Did you watch the remake with Jake Gyllenhaal? Let us know on our Twitter  and Instagram .

This article was originally published on bamsmackpow.com as Road House: 10 best scenes from the classic movie, ranked .

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Movie Review: A remake of ‘Road House’ with Jake Gyllenhaal turns into a muscular, Florida romp

This image released by Prime Video shows Conor McGregor, left, and Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from “Road House.” (Laura Radford/Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Prime Video shows Conor McGregor in a scene from “Road House.” (Laura Radford/Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Prime Video shows Jake Gyllenhaal, left, and Lukas Gage in a scene from “Road House.” (Laura Radford/Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Prime Video shows Daniela Melchior in a scene from “Road House.” (Laura Radford/Prime Video via AP)

Jake Gyllenhaal, from left, Daniela Melchoir, Conor McGregor, Lukas Gage and Billy Magnussen pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere for the the film ‘Road House’ in London, Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Jake Gyllenhaal poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere for the the film ‘Road House’ in London, Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Daniela Melchoir poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere for the the film ‘Road House’ in London, Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Conor McGregor poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere for the the film ‘Road House’ in London, Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

This image released by Prime Video shows Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from “Road House.” (Laura Radford/Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Prime Video shows Lukas Gage, background left, and Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from “Road House.” (Laura Radford/Prime Video via AP)

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Elwood P. Dalton is a classy sort of bouncer. While five tough guys circle him outside a bar looking to bash his skull in, he has a question for them: “Before we start, do you have insurance?” And after savagely beating each up, he kindly drives them to the hospital.

Dalton — played by a muscular and languid Jake Gyllenhaal — is a former UFC fighter with a dark past in “Road House,” a reworking of the pulpy 1989 action film starring Patrick Swayze.

“You sure you thought this all the way through?” Dalton at one point asks an assailant who has the nerve to plunge a knife into his abdomen. The same question can be asked of the filmmakers: Is it really wise to retread this old flick? The answer is as shocking as a sucker punch: Yes, indeed.

Gyllenhaal is a sort of Spider-Man-meets-Jack Reacher-meets Jason Bourne, an oddball loner with ferocious fighting abilities who makes a living in illegal fights and lives in his car, haunted by what he did to a friend in the octagon. He douses booze on his open wounds and uses electrical tape instead of a bandage, yet he also oddly uses wheelie luggage. (You expected a big old black duffel, right?) What’s in the baggage? A death wish, of course.

He is lured to the Florida Keys by a roadhouse bar owner (the always brilliantly tart Jessica Williams), who needs an excellent bouncer to protect her from nightly violence. He’s offered $5,000 a week to stop thugs in sleeveless jean jackets from throwing bottles, flipping tables and breaking pool cues. (The Florida tourist board will love this movie).

“I’m hoping you’re different,” a bar employee says and he is. Dalton settles in the fictional Glass Key, dates a cutie, makes friends with the good folk and lives in what all damaged loners gravitate to, a houseboat. He soon teaches the other bouncers the tricks of the trade, Zen-like, and finds excellent reasons to take off his shirt.

“I’m just some guy,” he says. “You don’t want to know me.”

Then he uncovers a conspiracy right out of “Scooby-Doo:” The land under the bar is crucial to the creation of a luxury resort dreamed up by the local rich guy and crooked cops. Basically, organized crime is trying to drive the bar owner out of business. “Zoinks!”

At this point, “Road House” gets an instant jolt of electricity from former UFC fighter Conor McGregor, who makes his acting debut as a psychotic gun-for-hire Knox. He may have one of the best intros in film history, casually walking down a European town buck naked except for a pair of boots.

Dalton and Knox are destined to go mano-a-mano and there’s a grudging respect between them. They’re both deeply cut and they’re both messed up. “There’s something wrong with you. Me too,” the Irish mountain of muscles says. He’s the sort of chaos agent who picks up a golf club and says he wants to go “clubbing.”

Like a night of heavy drinking, things gets a little bizarre toward the end of the movie as it starts straying far from the roadhouse. Speed boats go flying, explosions go bang and someone uses arson to send a message. A deadly crocodile that plays an outsized role is sadly abandoned.

Screenwriters Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry have leaned into cliches — dead mothers, double-crosses and quirky kids that pull out the paternal part of our heroes. But a menacing, unstable McGregor is a gift. So is Billy Magnussen, who plays the rich boy bully deliciously preppy. He’s so evil, he throws his cellphone into the ocean out of frustration, then asks an underling to retrieve it.

“The Bourne Identity” director Doug Liman seems to be having fun, his camera lingering on the chiseled beefsteak and mixing in honky tonk songs by the deliciously named Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. & The Zydeco Twisters. The action scenes are dynamite, layering POV camera work with great, thundering, bottle smashing stunts. It knows it’s silly, but it’s still a good time.

That’s reason enough that Liman is upset the movie is avoiding cineplexes and going straight to streaming. But he could rectify that. He could hire, like, an unstable, but gracious, former fighter who lives in his car. For a few thousand, that guy can make things right.

“Road House,” an Amazon MGM Studios release streaming on Prime Video from March 21, is rated R for “nudity, violence, alcohol use and foul language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0CH61M727/ref=atv_hm_hom_c_foFU9R_10_2?jic=8%7CEgNhbGw%3D

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

• International

March 26, 2024 - Baltimore Key Bridge collapses after ship collision

By Helen Regan , Kathleen Magramo , Antoinette Radford, Alisha Ebrahimji , Maureen Chowdhury , Rachel Ramirez , Elise Hammond , Aditi Sangal , Tori B. Powell , Piper Hudspeth Blackburn and Kathleen Magramo , CNN

Our live coverage of the Baltimore bridge collapse has moved here .

Crew member on DALI said everyone on board was safe hours after bridge collapse, official says

From CNN’s Amy Simonson

A crew member on the DALI cargo ship sent a message hours after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed Tuesday saying everybody on board was safe, according to Apostleship of the Sea director Andy Middleton.

Middleton, who spent time with the captain of the DALI Monday, told CNN’s Laura Coates he reached out to a crew member after hearing about the incident Tuesday morning. 

He said there were 22 members aboard the ship from India who were setting sail earlier Tuesday morning and were heading toward Sri Lanka.

“I was able to reach out to a crew member very early this morning around 5:30 (a.m. ET) or 6 (a.m. ET) and get a message to them asking if they were OK,” he said. “That crew member responded within just a few minutes advising that the crew was safe, and everybody that [was] on board was safe.”

Middleton was told by the ship's captain Monday that the vessel was going to take a longer route to avoid risks along the Yemen coast.

“When I was out with the captain yesterday, we were talking while we were driving, and he advised that they were sailing down and around the tip of South Africa in order to avoid the incidents that are going on off the Yemen coast, and it was a safer way to go,” he said.

Middleton said the  Apostleship of the Sea  is a ministry to seafarers with members that spend time in the port and on the vessels as a friendly face to the seafarers that visit the Port of Baltimore, “taking care of their needs to make sure that they're reminded of their God-given human dignity when they're here in Baltimore.”

Search operation ends in "heartbreaking conclusion," Maryland governor says. Here's the latest

From CNN staff

Six people, who were believed to be part of a road construction crew, are presumed dead after Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning. The collapse came after a 984-foot cargo ship hit the bridge's pillar.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told reporters Tuesday evening it's a "really heartbreaking conclusion to a challenging day."

Late Tuesday, it was discovered that two of the construction workers who went missing after the bridge collapsed were from Guatemala , the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late Tuesday.

Here's what you should know to get up to speed:

• The victims: Eight people were on the bridge  when it fell, according to officials. At least two people were rescued — one was taken to the hospital and was later  discharged , fire official and the medical center said.
• The incident: Video shows the moment the entire bridge structure falls into the water, as the ship hits one of the bridge's pillars. CNN analysis shows that the  ships lights flickered  and it veered off course before it hit the bridge. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the crew on the ship were able to issue a "mayday" before colliding into the bridge, which allowed the authorities to stop incoming traffic from going onto the bridge.
• Response efforts: Earlier, dive teams from various state and local agencies were brought in to assist in search-and-rescue operations, according to Maryland State Police Secretary Col. Roland L. Butler Jr.. The mission started with 50 personnel and continued to grow before the Coast Guard announced Tuesday evening that it was suspending its active search-and-rescue operation and transitioning to a "different phase."
• The investigation: Authorities are still working to establish exactly how the crash occurred. The National Transportation Safety Board will look into  how the bridge was built  and investigate the structure itself. It will "take time to dig through" whether the bridge had ever been  flagged for any safety deficiencies , NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said.
• Rebuilding the bridge: US Sen. Chris Van Hollen said the path to rebuilding the bridge will be "long and expensive." Senior White House adviser Tom Perez told reporters Tuesday “it’s too early” to tell how long it will take to rebuild the bridge. President Joe Biden said Tuesday he wants the federal government to bear the full cost of rebuilding the collapsed bridge, noting that it will not wait for the company who owns the container ship DALI to shoulder the costs. Funding could come from the Federal Highway Administration as well as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, but it may require additional funding from Congress.

2 of the missing construction workers from bridge collapse were from Guatemala, foreign ministry says

From CNN’s Allison Gordon, Flora Charner and Amy Simonson

Two of the construction workers missing from the bridge collapse in Baltimore were from Guatemala, the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late Tuesday.

Those missing included a 26-year-old originally from San Luis, Petén. The other is a 35-year-old from Camotán, Chiquimula, the statement said.

The ministry said both were part of a work team “repairing the asphalt on the bridge at the time of the accident.”

The statement did not name the two people missing, but it said the country’s consul general in Maryland “went to the area where the families of those affected are located,” where he hopes to be able to meet with the brothers of both missing people.

The consulate   also issued a statement Tuesday saying its consul general in Maryland "remains in contact with local authorities," and also confirmed that two of those missing "were of Guatemalan origin.”

Six people, who were believed to be part of a road construction crew, are presumed dead after Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early Tuesday morning when a cargo ship hit the bridge's pillar.

State and federal officials have not released information about the identities of any of the six missing workers.

Underwater mapping of bridge collapse area to begin Wednesday, Baltimore fire chief says

From CNN's Jennifer Henderson

Search operations near the Key Bridge collapse have shut down for the night due to dangerous conditions, but the process of underwater mapping with many local, state and federal dive teams will begin Wednesday, Baltimore City Fire Chief James Wallace told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday night.

Wallace said the portion of the Patapsco River is “tidal influenced, so it goes through tide cycles just like the open waters of the Chesapeake Bay does.”

The water depths in the area under the bridge vary from 40 feet to more than 60 feet, Wallace said. The deeper the divers go, the colder the temperatures they encounter, and the visibility is zero, he added.

 Wallace said when crews arrived Tuesday morning, the surface water temperatures of the Patapsco River were about 47 degrees with an air temperature of 44-45 degrees.

Here's what you should know about the historic Francis Scott Key Bridge

The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early Tuesday after a massive container ship lost power and crashed into the iconic Baltimore bridge, sending people and vehicles into the frigid Patapsco River.

Six people, believed to be part of a road construction crew, are presumed dead and the Coast Guard has ended its active search and rescue mission.

Here's what you should know about the historic bridge:

• How old?: The Francis Scott Key Bridge, also referred to as just the Key Bridge, opened to traffic in March 1977 and is the final link in the Baltimore Beltway, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA.) It crosses over the 50-foot-deep Patapsco River, where former US attorney Francis Scott Key found inspiration to write the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner, the MDTA says.
• How long?: The bridge was 1.6 miles long when standing, MDTA reports.
• Traffic volume: More than 30,000 people commuted daily on the bridge, according to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
• How much did it cost?: The bridge cost $60.3 million to build, MDTA says. Since its collapse, President Joe Biden said he’s committed to helping rebuild the bridge as soon as possible.
• About the port: Baltimore ranks as the ninth biggest US port for international cargo. It handled a record 52.3 million tons, valued at $80.8 billion, in 2023. According to the Maryland state government, the port supports 15,330 direct jobs and 139,180 jobs in related services.
• About the ship: The bridge collapsed after a container vessel called Dali collided with one of its supports. Dali is operated by Singapore-based Synergy Group but had been chartered to carry cargo by Danish shipping giant Maersk . The ship is about 984 feet long , according to MarineTraffic data. That’s the length of almost three football fields.

Baltimore woman says bridge collapse was "like a piece of family dissolved"

From CNN's Kit Maher

For longtime Baltimore resident, Ceely, who opted not to share her last name, seeing footage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse  Tuesday was deeply personal.

“I was very heavy-hearted,” Ceely told CNN. “Very tearful, thinking about the families whose loved ones may be in the water and just remembering when the bridge was constructed, and it was just like a piece of family dissolved.”

Ceely was at a prayer group Tuesday morning when she saw the news. She recalled being afraid when she first crossed the bridge while in Ford Maverick in 1975, but grew to like it because it saved time on the road.

“It was a main artery just like a blood line. It was a main artery to the other side of town. It was awesome. It beat going through the city all the time,” she said.

Elder Rashad A. Singletary , a senior pastor who led Tuesday night’s vigil at Mt. Olive Baptist Church told CNN that many church members watched the bridge's construction.

"It’s a part of the community. A lot of our individuals in our congregation drive that bridge to go to work, and so now it’s really a life changing moment,” he said.

"Heartbreaking conclusion to a challenging day," Maryland governor says as Coast Guard ended search operation

From CNN's Aditi Sangal

More than 18 hours after the collapse of the Baltimore bridge, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said it was a heartbreaking conclusion after the Coast Guard ended the search-and-rescue operation for the six people who were on the bridge when it collapsed.

It's a "really heartbreaking conclusion to a challenging day," he said.

"We put every single asset possible — air, land and sea" to find the missing people, he told reporters on Tuesday evening. "While even though we're moving on now to a recovery mission, we're still fully committed to making sure that we're going to use every single asset to now bring a sense of closure to the families," the governor added.

6 people presumed dead after Baltimore bridge collapse, Coast Guard says. Here's what we know

As the sun sets in Baltimore, six people are presumed dead after a major bridge collapsed overnight Tuesday, according to the Coast Guard. The Francis Scott Key Bridge came down around 1:30 a.m. ET after a cargo ship collided with it.

The Coast Guard said it has ended its active search-and-rescue operation for the missing construction workers who were on the bridge when it collapsed.

• What we know: Eight people were on the bridge when it fell, according to officials. At least two people were rescued — one was taken to the hospital and has been discharged . The Coast Guard has been searching for six other people. But, around 7:30 p.m. ET, the Coast Guard said it has transitioned to a “different phase” of operation, now it did “not believe we are going to find any of these individuals alive,” Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath said.
• About the ship: The bridge collapsed after a container vessel called Dali collided with one of its supports. The vessel is operated by Singapore-based Synergy Group but had been chartered to carry cargo by Danish shipping giant Maersk . The US Embassy in Singapore has been in contact with the country’s Maritime and Port Authority, a State Department spokesperson said.
• The investigation: The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into the collapse. A team of 24 experts will dig into nautical operations, vessel operations, safety history records, owners, operators, company policy and any safety management systems or programs, said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. A voyage data recorder will be critical to the investigation, she added. 
• Vehicles on the bridge: Officials are also working to verify the numbers of how many cars and people were on the bridge, Homendy said. Gov. Wes Moore said the quick work of authorities in closing the bridge had saved lives . Radio traffic captured how authorities stopped traffic and worked to clear the bridge seconds before the impact . Maryland State Police Secretary Col. Roland L. Butler Jr. said there is a “ distinct possibility ” more vehicles were on the bridge, but authorities have not found any evidence to support that.
• Looking ahead: NTSB will look into how the bridge was built and investigate the structure itself, including if it was flagged for any safety deficiencies , Homendy said. The federal government has also directed its resources to help with search and rescue, to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge, Vice President Kamala Harris said . Earlier, President Joe Biden said t he federal government will pay to fix the bridge.
• The economy: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned the collapse will have a serious impact on supply chains . Until the channel is reopened, ships will likely already be changing course for other East Coast ports. Ocean carriers are already being diverted from the Port of Baltimore, where the bridge collapsed, to the Port of Virginia to “keep trade moving."

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