Film Review – Hit The Road (2021)

A family car journey. Not necessarily something to look forward to, especially if one of the engers is a lively child, as in Panah Panahi’s debut feature, Hit The Road. But this is no ordinary road trip, or road movie. It has a definite purpose at its end, one that lurks underneath the 90 minute narrative. The family don’t want to reach their destination and neither does the audience – but their reasons are poles apart.

The film opens with the family parked on the dusty side of a highway in their borrowed car, taking a break from the relentless Iranian sun. The father (Hassan Madjooni) is in the back, his apparently broken leg in plaster. The mother (Pantea Panahiha) is trying to find some peace, resting with her eyes closed, while their youngster (Rayan Sarlak) is getting increasingly fidgety and his older brother (Amin Simiar) is outside the car, determinedly solitary. They’re travelling with their sick dog and, once back on the road, they fuss over the animal interminably and get on each others’ nerves, often for the most trivial of reasons. Along the way, they meet mysterious masked men on motorbikes, and they’re clearly aiming for a specific destination, but it’s shrouded in mystery.

It all makes for some very strange, evasive behaviour, most of which is for the little boy’s benefit but, like all children, he knows something is decidedly off, even if he can’t explain it. So everything about him is exaggerated – his humour, his energy, his imagination – and his parents respond with a mixture of tolerance and irritation. His father, especially, loses patience regularly – “warn the people, he’s an idiot!” he shouts after the boy when he leaps on board a bus they’re supposed to be following. But the father, mother and older son are all haunted, sometimes close to tears and sometimes, you suspect, close to simply giving up on life. It gives the usual family bickering an acute edge, brings a sense of tension to every word and underlines the feeling that this is a family under the severest form of threat.

This is no ordinary road movie and certainly not one in the familiar Hollywood sense. Iranian cinema has developed a style of film shot in a car, the idea behind it being to avoid the eyes and ears of an intrusive state. It often means the vehicle isn’t just a confined location that comes with its own stresses, but a symbol of life under a repressive regime. Which gives you something of a pointer as to the reason for the journey in the first place. We won’t reveal it here because this is a film that really needs to be seen. Its finger is firmly on the emotional pulse of the family, but it’s a thriller of sorts, a crime movie and one about escape as well. That Panahi’s father, director Jafar Panahi, was recently imprisoned for criticising the Iranian regime gives it even more resonance.

The London Film Festival took Hit The Road to its heart last year, giving it the Best Film Award. It’s not hard to see why. The performances – especially from the astonishing young Sarlak – and searingly accurate portrayal of a family living with a dark secret, coupled with multiple themes, make it a richly rewarding experience. Debut features are rarely this good.

★★★★

Drama | Cert: 12A | UK cinemas from 29 July | Picturehouse Entertainment | Dir. Panah Panahi | Hassan Madjooni, Pantea Panahiha, Rayan Sarlak, Amin Simiar