By default instead of seeing “The Water Diviner” we went to see “The Road Within” a ‘small’ independent movie that wouldn’t be made by one of the big studios.

The film opens with Vincent (Robert Sheehan) in church  at his mother’s funeral ceremony sitting with his father (Robert Patrick), a politician, when all of a sudden he bursts into twitches and out loud foul language which includes calling the priest a pedophile, a faggot, telling the other people that the priest dyes his pubic hair. These are expressions of his Tourette’s Syndrome that he claims his brain controls.

In the next scene we see him being checked into an experiment treatment center in Nevada run by an experimental therapist (Kyra Sedgwick) as she introduces him to his roommate Alex (Dev Patel) who has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder along with a severe germ phobia. Very soon Marie (Zoe Kravitz), who is anorexic and has already had heart failure because of it, comes to Vincent’s room to tell she is to show him around.

Before you know what is happening Marie steals the keys to the therapist’s car and the trio are off on a road trip to spread Vincent’s mother’s ashes on the ocean in California. The center of the movie revolves how the 3 youths react to, and with, each other. In a way this is a triangle but not in the way you may think.

Kyra Sedgwick is wasted in her role and though Robert Patrick has 2 effective scenes it is the 3 young stars who save the movie that doesn’t really know whether it wants to be a  comedy or not and is hesitant to deal with what is known about the illnesses. 

Dev Patel, at 24, is building an excellent resume with his Slumdog Millionaire, the 2 Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, this film and his role in the television series The Newsroom. I was not familiar with Zoe Kravitz, 26, before this film though she does have 2 famous parents plus having been in 26 films including 2 X-Men films and Insurgent: the Divergent series and will be in Mad Max opening in May. The most impressive is 27 year old Irish actor Robert Sheehan who I am certainly looking forward to seeing more of in future movies and will look into the 12 films he has already made.

“The Road Within” probably won’t be seen by many people but should be if no other rason the acting of the 3 young leads.

Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MYzi2TPRcM