There are many movies that keep you on the edge of your seat and this one makes the list. The film addresses issues with racism and shows the audience how extreme racism is. Starring Queen Latifah and Ludacris, “End of the Road” takes place on a road trip to Texas with a family consisting of a mom, her brother, and her two kids. After Latifah, otherwise known in the movie as Brenda, husband dies, she decided to make a change and move the family to Texas. 

The film starts off with Brenda going to pick up her family to start the drive. Brenda picks up her family and while in the middle of the drive decides to start to get gas, but in the middle of the stop, two white men begin to make inappropriate comments to her 15-year-old daughter and the daughter flips them off. This angers the men to then follow Brenda and her family and they block off the family with their truck in the middle of the road. Brenda tries to calm the whole situation down and steps out of her car to talk to the men and they end up forcing her to apologize even though she or her daughter had done nothing wrong. 

The directors do an excellent job at showing the entitlement in the minds of white supremacists and in racism itself. This whole scene speaks volumes because it highlights how this affects people and families and truly harms people. This scene also points out how Brenda swallowed her pride when she realized these men had only bad intentions and were really intending on hurting them and how, at the end of the day, she was going to do all she needed to in order to protect her family. 

The family ends up getting a motel when in the middle of the night, they hear a shotgun go off and run to the room to try and see if someone is harmed. A man ends up dying but before that, Reggie, the brother of Brenda, goes to the restroom and finds a bag full of money and steals it. What Reggie didn’t know was that the money belonged to a bad guy who wants that money back and nothing will get in his way to get it back. 

The man kidnaps the son and demands he has his money back. With this information, Brenda is determined to get the money back to them, but she leaves the bag of money in the hotel room and the hotel cleaning girls end up stealing it. 

Throughout the whole movie, it shows how all reactions have an action that follows. Latifah does an amazing job of showing the emotions that run through a determined mother and how truly, nothing can stand between that. She connects so deeply through the character and you can even feel that through the screen. 

This movie to me sends a very important message to people because it shares how impactful racism truly is and how dangerous it could be and is. The acting portrayed by Queen Latifah and the other cast members was out of this world and Latifah did outstanding work when capturing the strength of a mother.

5/5