Review: Bad weather, bad driving and Russian aggrievement collide in dashcam-doc ‘The Road Movie’

“The Road Movie” will have you believing we’re all starring in our own first-person thriller whenever we get behind the wheel.

Somewhere between a virtual-reality vaudeville and a special episode of “Caught on Camera,” Dmitrii Kalashnikov’s voyeuristically amusing compilation documentary assembles dashcam videos of Russian drivers across one cyclical year (winter to winter) as they meet life — pun intended — head-on.

Yes, there are crashes — initiated by either extreme weather or terrible driving — not to mention road-rage incidents (without, thankfully, anything overtly violent shown) and ill-timed animal crossings (boy, are cows resilient). But there’s also the humorously absurd: the fender bender hilariously foretold by the GPS voice intoning “Danger in 200 meters”; a disturbed man clinging to a woman’s car hood as she drives and screams; a tank casually rolling into view at a car wash; and the driver on a one-way street who manages to block a car being chased by police, then loudly criticizes the officers’ technique as they swarm the trapped vehicle.

That last one also illustrates Kalashnikov’s unsung theme beyond the windshield-POV gimmick — namely, the Russian attitude that fuses inconvenience, suffering and condemnation into its own special cocktail of aggrievement. Like the guy stuck in traffic, watching a truck ahead being openly robbed by two men, unironically voicing disdain at the people who don’t get out of their cars to stop it. Between the defensive driving and offensive behavior, and vice versa, “The Road Movie” is a gleeful rubbernecker’s large popcorn’s worth of crazy.

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‘The Road Movie’

In Russian with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 7 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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