Hit the Road (2021)

Little brother Rayan Sarlak steals the show in this otherwise rather unremarkable road trip story. It depicts a family travelling in their car, squabbling, bickering and generally winding each other up. Only the quiet elder brother (Amin Simiar) tries to stay out of the constant barrage of activity that accompanies their journey across the Iranian desert. Now I suppose the thing for me was that I found the whole thing actually quite irritating. Perhaps that is testament to the observational skills of director Panah Panahi and, indeed, to the ensemble cast who manage to recreate quite successfully the storyline of a family road trip that would simply put the fear of death into me. Add to this rather dysfunction mix, a sick dog, and somehow the situation just became too contrived for me too early on, and it stuck! That said, Sarlak is engaging and enjoyable to watch and at times the dynamic between him and his cast-bound dad (Hassan Madjooni) - who has a keyboard drawn on his plaster - is quite entertaining; but for the most part I just couldn't engage. The cast is tight and the story doesn't hang around but somehow it felt longer than 90 minutes as their trip introduced just one too many themes. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood, but after a while it wasn't just each other's nerves this was getting on.