Six desperate men are hired to transport a dangerous cargo over a rough desert road, lured by the promise of a big bonus -- if they survive the trip. The main protagonists are a tough, cynical womanizer (Brian Keith) and a late-middle-aged failure (Dick Foran) who's at the end of his rope.
Does any of this sound familiar? The movie -- just like a certain classic foreign film which will remain unacknowledged by the parties responsible for this turkey -- even begins with a literal bang, as an out-of-control rocket takes out a schoolyard full of kids and moms. (Which is probably the one-and-only truly shocking moment in this entire movie, mostly due to its gratuitous body count.)
Unfortunately, comparing "Violent Road" to "Wages of Fear" is a bit like comparing a bottle of stale malt liquor (with a couple of cigarette butts floating in it) to a shot of Casa Noble crystal tequila. OK, I exaggerate: Watching "Violent Road" wasn't nearly as unpleasant as downing said bottle of stale malt liquor, butts and all, would no doubt be. But the fact remains this could serve as a primer on how to take the elements of a classic thriller and botch every single one of them.
Instead of a series of fiendish obstacles which will test the limits of the drivers' ingenuity, courage and endurance, they're challenged first by a remarkably goofy sequence involving one of the phoniest boulders in cinematic history.
When they reach a spot where a landslide has almost completely blocked the road, as the first truck negotiates this narrow pass, the vibration dislodges some gravel, a few rocks and a paper-mache boulder -- just one, mind you. As this massive rock is bounding like a jackrabbit with its tail on fire down that near-vertical slope one of the drivers comes out of nowhere and *deflects it* with a brilliantly-executed flying kick!
Now that was a pretty amazing stunt, but from the size of the boulder, if it had been the real thing it would have weighed at least half a ton. Can you say "shattered kneecap, tibia and fibula"? Boy howdy, but those 50s-era fuc -- er, truckers were REALLY tough.
Note also that unlike "The Wages of Fear", instead of nitro, these guys are transporting the separate components of rocket fuel (hydrazine, concentrated hydrogen peroxide, and nitric acid) which means if even one of the trucks doesn't get through, the whole exercise will have been pointless. So you can safely bet all the trucks will reach their destination, because if there's one thing that's certain about this film it's that it will remain uncontaminated by any trace of that wimpy, Frenchified bleak existentialism.
So much for suspense, then.
Although just as in "Wages of Fear" they kill off Dick Foran's character near the end of the film, here it's done in a way which mostly makes him look like an idiot, while leaving Brian Keith's character entirely blameless. (No moral ambiguities here, Bub!) Seriously: Foran discovers a cap on a nitric acid tank that's been jarred loose and is leaking, yet despite having been warned about how nasty and corrosive the stuff is, he tightens it with his bare hand? Don't truckers who transport hazardous cargo have toolboxes, maybe with a pipe wrench or even some heavy-duty rubber gloves?
The boys encounter their next big challenge when the brakes fail on an oncoming school bus -- yet it still manages to negotiate several hairpin turns as it barrels down a steep mountain road. Just in the nick of time, the skilled and courageous drivers pull their trucks off the road. Whew!
Then the brakes fail on one of the trucks, but Keith wrastles it down from on top of a mountain. Wotta man! And no one will leave their seats during the protracted towing sequence.
Don't get me wrong: I admire Brian Keith as an actor. That still doesn't make the way this ends any easier to take. I wanted to go all Elvis on the TV screen, for the blatant thumb-in-the-eye they give to the original.
But if you have some time to kill and this is your only option versus, say, a documentary on antique Serbo-Croatian mustache cups, hey, go for it.
Does any of this sound familiar? The movie -- just like a certain classic foreign film which will remain unacknowledged by the parties responsible for this turkey -- even begins with a literal bang, as an out-of-control rocket takes out a schoolyard full of kids and moms. (Which is probably the one-and-only truly shocking moment in this entire movie, mostly due to its gratuitous body count.)
Unfortunately, comparing "Violent Road" to "Wages of Fear" is a bit like comparing a bottle of stale malt liquor (with a couple of cigarette butts floating in it) to a shot of Casa Noble crystal tequila. OK, I exaggerate: Watching "Violent Road" wasn't nearly as unpleasant as downing said bottle of stale malt liquor, butts and all, would no doubt be. But the fact remains this could serve as a primer on how to take the elements of a classic thriller and botch every single one of them.
Instead of a series of fiendish obstacles which will test the limits of the drivers' ingenuity, courage and endurance, they're challenged first by a remarkably goofy sequence involving one of the phoniest boulders in cinematic history.
When they reach a spot where a landslide has almost completely blocked the road, as the first truck negotiates this narrow pass, the vibration dislodges some gravel, a few rocks and a paper-mache boulder -- just one, mind you. As this massive rock is bounding like a jackrabbit with its tail on fire down that near-vertical slope one of the drivers comes out of nowhere and *deflects it* with a brilliantly-executed flying kick!
Now that was a pretty amazing stunt, but from the size of the boulder, if it had been the real thing it would have weighed at least half a ton. Can you say "shattered kneecap, tibia and fibula"? Boy howdy, but those 50s-era fuc -- er, truckers were REALLY tough.
Note also that unlike "The Wages of Fear", instead of nitro, these guys are transporting the separate components of rocket fuel (hydrazine, concentrated hydrogen peroxide, and nitric acid) which means if even one of the trucks doesn't get through, the whole exercise will have been pointless. So you can safely bet all the trucks will reach their destination, because if there's one thing that's certain about this film it's that it will remain uncontaminated by any trace of that wimpy, Frenchified bleak existentialism.
So much for suspense, then.
Although just as in "Wages of Fear" they kill off Dick Foran's character near the end of the film, here it's done in a way which mostly makes him look like an idiot, while leaving Brian Keith's character entirely blameless. (No moral ambiguities here, Bub!) Seriously: Foran discovers a cap on a nitric acid tank that's been jarred loose and is leaking, yet despite having been warned about how nasty and corrosive the stuff is, he tightens it with his bare hand? Don't truckers who transport hazardous cargo have toolboxes, maybe with a pipe wrench or even some heavy-duty rubber gloves?
The boys encounter their next big challenge when the brakes fail on an oncoming school bus -- yet it still manages to negotiate several hairpin turns as it barrels down a steep mountain road. Just in the nick of time, the skilled and courageous drivers pull their trucks off the road. Whew!
Then the brakes fail on one of the trucks, but Keith wrastles it down from on top of a mountain. Wotta man! And no one will leave their seats during the protracted towing sequence.
Don't get me wrong: I admire Brian Keith as an actor. That still doesn't make the way this ends any easier to take. I wanted to go all Elvis on the TV screen, for the blatant thumb-in-the-eye they give to the original.
But if you have some time to kill and this is your only option versus, say, a documentary on antique Serbo-Croatian mustache cups, hey, go for it.