Critic Reviews

Call it a vanity project or bargain basement movie mythos, but no hard-boiled biker picture ever looked or sounded like Road to Paloma.

Monument Valley makes an appearance, and there are soulful moments of slow motion. There’s enough heart here to make up for whatever first-timer miscalculations ride along too.

Momoa creates an involving if relaxed pace, one whose moody rhythms are infused with a kind of soulful spirituality.

The film’s loose naturalism and strong acting — Chris Browning, as a liaison between the F.B.I. and the reservation, is especially enjoyable — are slyly seductive.

Before the plot butts in, Road To Paloma works reasonably well as a moody travelogue that keeps finding new ways to show off its dingy bona fides.

This film is numbingly dull.

Momoa does capture some scenes of genuine warmth and beauty that suggest he has the potential to develop a filmmaker’s eye for visual poetry.

Straining mightily for a mythic quality and reaching a predictably melancholic, violent conclusion, Road to Paloma mainly comes across as a vanity project star vehicle.