Hit The Road: India (2013)

Directed by: Gor and Mushegh Baghdasaryan
Country: India / Armenia

Movie Review: In this travel documentary, directed by Armenian brothers Baghdasaryan, Richard Gazarian and Keith King arrive in India to make a 12-day trip rickshaw rally from Mumbai to Chennai. They will compete against other five teams, crossing 2000 km without any maps or GPS. Along the trip they will have to face adverse weather conditions and beat their increasing exhaustion, as days go by. The not infrequent mechanical problems that take a lot of time to be fixed, dangerous roads, intense traffic, lack of visibility, and the constant stress and tension that participants are subjected to, could very well have made this documentary more appealing that it was. As a viewer, I didn’t feel any real sense of danger, and all the excitement or frustration coming from the participants never reached me in a satisfying way. That’s why I didn’t feel involved and for me the experience of following this adventure had its enjoyable moments but was far from being completely rewarding. Some nice images of a unique country as India were presented at the sound of a great alternative rock score (despite the sound leveling issues detected), maybe the same music the men listened in their wireless music system mounted in the rickshaw. They also had time to visit a school and stop by a McDonalds where, unfortunately, no juicy cheeseburgers were being sold. Salutary sportsmanship was observable in a grueling trip that required more intense incidents to achieve higher relevance.