This film is far from the best I've ever seen but its definitely the best B-movie I've ever seen. The structure is Tarantino like with some of the familiar gore. However, this film does not attempt to be funny. This is a gritty, down to earth film following the stories of several likable characters through conversations eventually leading to a huge climax bringing them all together. This is the type of film you should watch late at night on the couch for the simple reason that you don't expect too much so you get a lot more than you hoped for in a B movie. And now for some very weird reason i have to make up ten lines of text. That should do it.

There's a killer on the road.But the movie would have been much better ,if this character had been ruled out.Because the killer who kills in the name of Jesus has become a cliché.Ditto for the "radio vérité".What remains is good indeed:best performance is given by Robert Forster who portrays a trucker with a golden heart;more than his sympathy for the young Indian ,it's his scene with the dog that will move you:as simple as it can be ,it goes straight to the heart.The clown and his wife are also endearing characters ,with their clumsiness.The writers have succeeded in giving their men and women some substance,which is quite a feat for a relatively short movie .And there are a lot of "stories" in the story ,like the tale of the elephant.The Indian girl,her grandma,the trucker,the two sisters and the circus people tell us a lot about us,and it becomes a good "road movie by night".But the thriller side,the killer,it was not so necessary ,and the last scene is too long and comes as an anticlimax.Better than its current low rating anyway

OUTSIDE OZONA / (1998) **1/2 (out of four)By Blake French: "Outside Ozona" wanders just a little too much to warrant a recommendation. It's a solid attempt from first time director and screenwriter J.S. Cardone; he creates a sordid environment for his characters and often provokes a real sense of community and compassion, but there are just too many characters and too little of a plot to carry them through. I enjoyed much of the film, enough to call this movie a close miss-but I cannot recommend a movie that doesn't know what it's about. There is so much material here, the thin plot threads quickly break apart, and the audience is the group who wishes there we're some kind of boundaries to keep everything together. The movie takes place during a single night on the stretching deserted highways outside Ozona, Oklahoma. We meet a lot of characters, too many, that all seem to live separate lives unrelated to the others. There's a circus clown (Kevin Pollack) who gets mad when he's fired, but becomes even more angry when he discovers his stripper girlfriend (Penelope Ann Miller) has previously slept with his boss to help save his job. There is a lonesome truck driver (Robert Forster) who lends a helping hand to a Navajo Indian woman, whose grandmother (Keteri Walker) is dying. Two bitter sisters (including Sherilyn Fenn) who pick up hitchhiker (David Paymer) who may or may not be a serial killer roaming the highways. The film makes several attempts to connect these stories, which we cut back and forth from throughout the film. One of those attempts deals with a disco jockey on his last strings (Taj Mahal), whose boss (Meat Loaf) isn't happy that his radio station has become under the heat of higher powers. Another attempt is the film's climax, in which all of these stories come to a literal crash. This is disposable and needless. It concludes the various circumstances, but doesn't succeed in bringing them together for a final showdown. It's kind of a disappointment. There are many scenes in which the various characters exchange lengthy conversations that really don't further the plot. But is there really a central plot? Not really. Perhaps that's why the movie doesn't work, because it has no focus, no purpose to build the tension, no story to develop. This is a simple character study. One that often becomes violent (there are some graphically bloody images) gratuitous (there's a scene in a strip club that involves so much unwarranted nudity it feels awkward), and boring (look up "talking heads" in a film analysis book and you'll probably find references to this film). Some of the characters are interesting, but with so many, the film doesn't know which ones. After all of this I forgot to mention the subplot involving the FBI tracking down a serial killer who brutally murders young women as a means of religious rituals. When you forget a subplot that major and important, you know the film's plate is a little too full.

This movie is like a rural version of Pulp Fiction, where several subplots are drawn together at the end. It's interesting and moves along well, complete with serial killer, stripper, armed robber, budding romances, and a cool DJ. If you liked the kind of subplot dialogues in Pulp Fiction, you'll like this one.