Slick titles and an electric background score lead us onto meeting the protagonists, Lakshmi (Antara Mali) and Arvind (Vivek Oberoi). Lakshmi’s father is a cop and does not consider Arvind to be son-in-law material. Mind you, Lakshmi is no shrinking violet but nevertheless, the two decide to abscond to get married and take to the ROAD. Great drive through the barren outback of what is meant to be Rajasthan but could be the Aussie outback as much of the film is shot there, until they pick up a hitchhiker Babu (Manoj Bajpai). Now that’s really asking for trouble and trouble is what they get not more than a few moments into their drive together. Puffing away on a ciggie when Babu has been told that Lakshmi is allergic signals the first sign that something is amiss and soon thereafter, Babu produces a gun and off he goes with Lakshmi in tow with Arvind in hot pursuit on foot!

Arvind manages to enlist the help of a truck driver and manages to wrestle his babe back only to have himself pursued again by the obviously psychotic Babu, now maniacally in the seat of a truck and intent on killing the two love birds. Managing to escape this, Arvind, on his own, decides to report the matter at the local police station (great scene) where no one show s even a modicum of interest. Relieved to have left Babu behind, the lovers relax with sexy song and dance only to find Babu in their boot the next morning..so off we go again, Arvind on foot, babu and babe off again together. The chase starts yet again. And by now, no one believes Arvind.

Rajat Mukherjee takes a plot which is reminiscent to loads of Hollwood movies..Breakdown, Joy Ride, the Hitcher, Duel and puts together and interesting start to the film. Its shot beautifully and has a pulsating background score but Mukherjee does not have a script which is strong enough to sustain interest. What is Babu’s motivation? Is he a psycho and if he is, then make him one completely. Or is he just a small gangster on the run, out to take a hostage or two with him, trying to get away. Or is he actually falling in love (yawn yawn...no one believes this). Somewhere in between, Mukherjee loses his way and loses the plot. It them rambles on and on and the impact of the first half is lost especially with the punctuation of those absolutely dreadful songs. That of course is a commercial consideration which was forced upon the director as Mukherjee had wanted to make this a songless film. What could be worse than to have the psychotic Bajpai have a song with Antara Mali, a point when I would imagine that most of the audience decided it was a loo break, some may not even wanting to come back.

The other problem with the film is Manoj Bajpai. Lauded as an actor of great promise, I find him repetitive and at best ordinary. He does nothing with his role and is most uninteresting. Considering that he is the central character in the film, he shows up the flaws of the script even more by being utterly lacklustre and dull. Vivek Oberoi plays a straight role which I can understand after Company. However, there is not very much that he can bring to the role and makes not much of an impression. Mercifully, this was not his first film. Antara Mali plays Lakshmi as a gutsy independent woman which makes a change from the simpering wrecks that we usually get on screen. However, by the same token, we are given the rain drenched songs and the semi nude cavorting on the bed to tantalise the front benchers! She improves as the film goes on but I would imagine she has a long way to go still to make it into the bigger league of actresses.

Sandesh Shandiliya comes up with a dire musical score, a sort of bastardisation of what may have been a Sandeep Chowta score. What happened to the potential seen in K3g? The music is really awful. The background score done by Amar Mohile however is superb. Cinematography deserves a mention too. On the whole, Road is an experiment which goes wrong, an attempt to be different but messed up quite a bit. Too bad.