Road
Synopsis:
About an hour into the movie Road, things are already totally off the rails because Babu is sitting in the middle of a blazing desert highway eating a pack of cheap biscuits while looking completely unbothered by the fact that he's holding a dead guy's watch, and honestly, if you've ever seen any bollywood movies from that era, you just knew things were gonna get weird very quickly. But to understand why these poor kids are stranded in the middle of nowhere with a total psychopath, you have to go back to the beginning when Lakshmi and Arvind decide to run away from their families and take a spontaneous road trip across the scorching terrain, which is a classic trope in hindi films, though this one takes a much darker turn than usual. They're just driving along in their little red car, listening to the radio, and trying to escape their nagging parents, completely oblivious to the chaos waiting for them down the asphalt. So then they pull over at a sketchy roadside dhaba where the service is terrible and the patrons look like they haven't smiled since the nineties, and that's when they first cross paths with Babu, who is played by Manoj Bajpai with this twitchy, unpredictable energy that makes you immediately uncomfortable. He's wearing this loud, patterned shirt that looks like it hasn't been washed in a week, and he's got this stupid toothpick hanging out of the side of his mouth while he stares a little too intensely at Lakshmi, played by Antra Mali, who's just trying to drink a lukewarm bottle of soda. Arvind, played by Vivek Oberoi, tries to act all tough and tells the guy to stop staring, but you can already tell that things are about to get really awkward and tense. They manage to drive away from the dhaba, hoping they've left the creep behind, but the funny thing is, that's literally impossible because Babu just keeps reappearing on the side of the road like a bad rash. He hitchhikes a ride with them because his bike supposedly broke down, and because they're too polite and slightly terrified of his unhinged laughing, they actually let him get into the back seat, which is the worst decision ever made in the history of cinema. He starts playing mind games with the young couple, making weird comments about life and death and fate, and the tension inside that cramped car is just suffocating as the miles tick by and the sun beats down relentlessly on the windshield. The dialogue gets super weird, and at one point Babu just leans forward and casually says, "Manzil to wahi hai jahan rasta khatam ho," which doesn't even make sense in context, but Manoj Bajpai delivers it with such menacing glee that the characters just sit there in frozen silence.
Anyway, things escalate rapidly when they stop for the night at a desolate motel that looks like it was abandoned during the stone age, and that's where a whole bunch of colorful eccentric characters show up to pad out the runtime. Makhrand Deshpande is there playing some weird wandering nomad, and Rajpal Yadav pops up as a frantic, sweaty local who has zero idea how to help them, and then Vijay Raaz shows up to add even more bizarre flavor to the unfolding disaster. There's even a random dance sequence featuring a special appearance by Ganesh Achar where people are shaking it in the dust, and it's so completely out of place in a thriller that you have to laugh at how typical it is for bollywood. Raj Zutshi and Ganesh Yadav are also lurking around in the background playing shady locals who seem to know way more than they're letting on, but honestly, nobody cares about what they're doing because the real focus is on Babu slowly losing his mind and terrorizing the two leads. Arvind tries to stand up to him, but Babu just laughs it off and beats him up in the dirt behind the motel while Lakshmi screams bloody murder. Right after that brutal beatdown, they're back in the car because they have no other choice, and Babu is driving now, dictating the route and forcing them deeper and deeper into the desolate wasteland with no cell service and no hope of rescue. They try to escape at a gas station, but Babu outsmarts them every single time, proving that you really shouldn't pick up hitchhikers who look like they belong on a most-wanted poster. The heat is oppressive, the car engine is overheating, and everyone is sweating through their clothes while the psychological torture reaches a fever pitch.
The plot moves at lightning speed toward the end when they finally crash the car into a ditch and have to run on foot across the blinding white salt flats. Babu chases them with a rusted pipe while laughing hysterically like a cartoon villain, and Arvind manages to grab a heavy rock and smash it over Babu's head, finally putting an end to the nightmare once and for all. They collapse in the dirt, bruised, bleeding, and entirely exhausted from the worst road trip imaginable. The camera pans up to the scorching sky.
Vivek Oberoi's hair in the first twenty minutes of Road looks like someone tried to sculpt a startled rodent out of cheap gel and bad lighting, and honestly, that’s where the trouble starts, or maybe where it gets interesting if you’re sitting in a lukewarm press screening wondering why the AC is rattling so loudly. Bollywood movies usually prefer their runaway couples glossy and heroic, sweating in slow motion while high-end synthesizers swell to tell you they are in love, but Ram Gopal Varma and his director protégé Rajat Mukherjee didn't want any of that sunshine nonsense when they rolled out this sweaty little genre experiment back in the early noughties. It’s a road movie that forgets to look at the scenery, preferring to trap you in cramped car interiors where the air smells like stale Marlboros and unwashed denim, which sounds atmospheric on paper until you realize half the dialogue is being delivered over the drone of a faulty fan belt. If I'm honest, the whole thing feels like it was shot during a weekend heatwave where nobody had enough water or patience, which occasionally serves the tension and frequently just makes your eyes hurt from the aggressive sun glare bouncing off every single windshield.
The plot itself is essentially a stripped-down photocopy of The Hitcher, except instead of Rutger Hauer playing the terrifying drifter with a mysterious vendetta, we get Manoj Bajpai wearing sunglasses at night and chewing on a toothpick with the kind of hyper-attentive menace that usually gets actors put on neighborhood watch lists. Bajpai plays Babu, a hitchhiker who enters the lives of runaway lovers Arvind and Lakshmi with the casual lethargy of a man deciding which brand of cheap cigarette to buy, immediately shifting the dynamic from a standard romantic elopement into a slow-motion psychological hostage situation. Antra Mali plays Lakshmi with a specific, vacant stare that works wonderfully when she's supposed to be paralyzed by fear in the passenger seat, though her character spends large stretches of the narrative reduced to whimpering or staring out the side window while the men do the heavy lifting. Vivek Oberoi, fresh off the electric success of Company, tries to channel that same intensity into a terrified architect who realizes he has no idea how to protect his girlfriend from a grinning psychopath on a desolate highway, but his performance relies a bit too heavily on heavy breathing and clutching the steering wheel until his knuckles turn chalk white. Rajat Mukherjee directs with a restless camera that refuses to sit still, darting from floorboards to rear-view mirrors like it's looking for an exit, though sometimes this technique gets exhausting when you just want to understand the spatial geography of a two-car chase on a stretch of empty tarmac.
What keeps the film from sinking entirely under the weight of its own sweaty nihilism is the supporting cast wandering in and out of the frames like refugees from a completely different, much weirder movie. Makhrand Deshpande shows up as a bizarre roadside dhaba owner who looks like he lives inside a chimney, rambling about fate and grease in a performance that belongs in a surrealist art installation rather than a standard-issue thriller, and his scene lasts about four minutes too long because someone clearly fell in love with his weird delivery during the editing phase. Then there's Rajpal Yadav playing a terrified truck driver who gets caught in Babu's orbit, delivering his lines with a manic, bug-eyed desperation that makes you laugh nervously before reminding you that violence in these kinds of Hindi films usually arrives without a warning punchline. Vijay Raaz gets a brief cameo as a cynical mechanic, and while his screen time is barely worth mentioning in terms of plot progression, he brings an anchor of weary realism to a universe that otherwise threatens to spin off into pure cartoon absurdity. Ganesh Yadav and Raj Zutshi populate the periphery as various law enforcement figures and shady locals, all of them sweating profusely under harsh studio lights meant to mimic the merciless Rajasthan sun, contributing to that overall texture of grime that defines the aesthetic.
Sandeep Chowta's soundtrack hits you over the head with distorted electric guitars and percussion tracks that sound like someone hitting a metal filing cabinet with a wrench, which works brilliantly during the tense night scenes when Babu is whispering psychological torture into Arvind's ear. Unfortunately, the main theme track repeats so often during the second half that you start to feel like you're trapped in a video game level where the boss music won't turn off until you defeat an enemy who refuses to die, a small mechanical annoyance that chips away at the suspense. The cinematography by Hari Nair deserves some kind of medal for endurance alone, capturing the blinding glare of white sand and asphalt without making the picture look like a tourism brochure, using long, unblinking takes that force you to watch characters make stupid decisions in real time. There's a distinct lack of digital trickery here, which dates the picture in a charming way but also means every physical stunt looks heavy and dangerous, like actual metal crashing into actual dirt with no CGI safety net to soften the impact.
By the time Babu starts playing his final, sadistic mind games with the couple at an abandoned gas station, the movie has abandoned any pretense of being a standard romance and fully embraced its identity as a nasty little B-movie that refuses to apologize for its own rough edges. It doesn't offer a grand moral or a neat resolution where everyone learns a valuable lesson about the importance of parental approval, opting instead for an abrupt, violent conclusion that feels less earned and more like the filmmakers simply ran out of film stock and diesel at the same time. You can see the seams coming apart in the editing room, particularly during a sequence where continuity between day and night shots makes zero geographical sense, but there's a raw, unpolished energy there that modern commercial cinema has largely smoothed out in favor of clean algorithms and pristine production design. It is a flawed, aggressive, occasionally irritating piece of work that stays in your head long after you've forgotten the plot details, mostly because Manoj Bajpai's unsettling grin refuses to leave the room once the screen goes dark.