Route 666

When it rains, it pours, and boy has it been bucketing down crap films this week in my house. Earlier this week I watched Ticker and it earned the distinction of being the only film I've ever fallen asleep during. To cap off what has been a week of fine cinematic fare (or is that farce?), we now take a look at Lou Diamond Phillips vehicle, Route 666.

Phillips leads a team of Federal Marshalls who are transporting a Federal Witness (Steven Williams). Trailed by an assassin, they travel down Route 66 until they come across a shortcut which joins it, ominously called Route 666. Taking a chance to gain some time and get Williams to court on time, they use the abandoned road. Uneventful at first, they soon discover that the road has the name for a reason and that Phillips is the key to their survival.

I found it incredibly hard to watch this film. The terrible quality of the acting, scripting, directing, photography and casting are the least of the problems. A bigger and more distracting factor occurs when the action starts. At these points the camera starts wobbling like mad and people move in jerk-o-vision. The filmmakers have tried to go for a certain look, and I think it's called "amateur". At times, I actually felt seasick watching it.

If by some chance you can put up with this vomit-o-vision camerawork, then you'll find that the film is just plain laughably bad idiocy without a single redeeming feature to recommend it. Sound harsh? Fine, don't trust me then. Go and grab this pile of crap and watch it for yourself. Then when you've finally apologised to your DVD player for making it play such rubbish, send me an email and you tell me what you thought. Deal? The things I do for you people...

Route 666 is presented as 2.35:1 and is 16:9 enhanced. The picture is nice and clear, with the finer details of the background scenery like grasses and gravel coming up solid in shot. The colours, with the setting of the desert being the predominant backdrop, look good with nice earthy colours reproduced well. The only real issue with the picture is the aliasing and edge enhancement. The aliasing is clearly visible when it occurs, which mostly whenever there are cars onscreen, but it isn't too severe. The edge enhancement gives a slight cut out look, but is tolerable as well.

Route 666 has two audio tracks, one in 448kbps DD 5.1 and the other DD 2.0 surround. Listening to the 5.1 mix, the sound is generally fine, with clear dialogue and a fairly crisp sound. It's the workmanship of the foley effects which is wildly inconsistent. In many of the scenes, such as shootouts, they've made many gunshots sound far too soft, while others are far too loud, and many effects opportunities are just plain ignored. The entire film virtually ignores the surrounds for effects work and utilises them mostly for wrapping the score around your head. So while I'm sure this transfer is a faithful reproduction of the original mix, the original sound engineering on this film totally sucks.

Sit back and enjoy a trailer for the film. Heck, don't play the movie at all and play the trailer twice instead. It’s better than the film, but that isn't really saying much. Other than that, they've decided that the sheer mesmerising quality of the film doesn't need gimmicky extra features to support it.

You have been warned.