Here now, something you may not mind the Russians for doing: The Road Movie. For the problematic-to-Google documentary, “director” Dmitrii Kalashnikov has assembled a shapeless smorgasbord of vehicular wrecks and yuks, all captured by his country’s drivers’ dashcams. To say Comrade Kalashnikov has plumbed the depths of YouTube so we don’t have to is no exaggeration; as the end credits reveal, the clips indeed come extracted from that digital rabbit hole.
Like the Jackass-ery of this generation’s narrative-free docs, there exists an undeniable rubbernecker quality to the proceedings, as cars and trucks and the occasional pedestrian careen into one another before our eyes. Oddly, amid all the chaos, the one element the pic lacks is pacing. In a likely effort to take his Frankensteined project over the one-hour mark, Kalashnikov lets many clips drift too long on both ends, whereas other bits arrive mercifully brief (read: those in which passengers had to have perished).
Context is nonexistent; even with bumper-to-bumper English subtitles, you’ll wish The Road Movie addressed the one burning question its mere existence raises — no, not “WTF is wrong with this country?” but “Who is recording all this footage? And why?” For the upvotes and the ad revenue, one assumes.
While not the slam-bang demolition derby of a flick as the clickbaiting trailer sells, it’s an ADHD-friendly mix of the hilarious and the horrifying. —Rod Lott