Road To Paloma reminded me very much of Easy Rider and although the central plot for both films is different this film seemed to use a similar approach to drive the narrative forward; random introduction of a 'new' stranger to the road trip, cruising around everywhere on motorbikes, lots of nonsensical hippy-dialogue and stoner type talk. For me these things were the root problem with Easy Rider and to be honest I wasn't impressed with having large portions of it rehashed 40 odd years later.
Although it establishes its story early on it seems to get largely forgotten about for large portions of the film (the first hour in particular). The film generally moves from scene to scene fairly well, but many of the scenes are rather stupid and seem rather pointless. I suppose the idea is that these scenes exist for the 2 men to 'discover' themselves so to speak, but there's no commentary or insight into anything that happens meaning that a lot of what you're seeing here seems to serve very little purpose.
Character development is rather weak and I felt that Momoa could have fleshed out Wolf a little bit more (the idea that Wolf and his father were fugitive and police officer respectively could potentially have created an interesting dynamic, but again this is swept under the carpet). The same could be said for Cash (whose name has an irony in itself) - we learn that he has money problems, but never get to grips with how he got into debt? Any film that spends a lot of its time with just 2 characters needs to afford them some development and provide the characters with some rapport/chemistry otherwise the film will become dull and boring and sadly that's exactly what happens here.
Even though the narrative sees 2 FBI agents pursuing Wolf this aspect of the film never really has any intensity or tension. This isn't helped by the clichéd approach that the 'cops' are always 1 step behind the fugitive ( in this case almost literally at every single stage of the film).
There are moments where Momoa gets things right; the attempted rape scene that Wolf witnesses affects him badly and the aftermath of this sees him confiding more in Cash - this essentially is where a bond starts to develop between the two men. The film also has quite a moving ending even though ultimately its an ending that can be seen coming.
Road To Paloma has one or two strong elements, but sadly I didn't find the majority of the journey from A to B particularly compelling and found a lot of it to be rather boring. If Momoa had played this film as more of a character study then it probably would have worked better. However, for the most part, it's just a 21st century version of Easy Rider with nearly all of its negative trappings included.
Although it establishes its story early on it seems to get largely forgotten about for large portions of the film (the first hour in particular). The film generally moves from scene to scene fairly well, but many of the scenes are rather stupid and seem rather pointless. I suppose the idea is that these scenes exist for the 2 men to 'discover' themselves so to speak, but there's no commentary or insight into anything that happens meaning that a lot of what you're seeing here seems to serve very little purpose.
Character development is rather weak and I felt that Momoa could have fleshed out Wolf a little bit more (the idea that Wolf and his father were fugitive and police officer respectively could potentially have created an interesting dynamic, but again this is swept under the carpet). The same could be said for Cash (whose name has an irony in itself) - we learn that he has money problems, but never get to grips with how he got into debt? Any film that spends a lot of its time with just 2 characters needs to afford them some development and provide the characters with some rapport/chemistry otherwise the film will become dull and boring and sadly that's exactly what happens here.
Even though the narrative sees 2 FBI agents pursuing Wolf this aspect of the film never really has any intensity or tension. This isn't helped by the clichéd approach that the 'cops' are always 1 step behind the fugitive ( in this case almost literally at every single stage of the film).
There are moments where Momoa gets things right; the attempted rape scene that Wolf witnesses affects him badly and the aftermath of this sees him confiding more in Cash - this essentially is where a bond starts to develop between the two men. The film also has quite a moving ending even though ultimately its an ending that can be seen coming.
Road To Paloma has one or two strong elements, but sadly I didn't find the majority of the journey from A to B particularly compelling and found a lot of it to be rather boring. If Momoa had played this film as more of a character study then it probably would have worked better. However, for the most part, it's just a 21st century version of Easy Rider with nearly all of its negative trappings included.