A large cast of gifted actress, including Glenn Close and Frances McDormand, is largely wasted in Beresford's honroable but failed effort to pay tribute to a group of disparate women held captive by the Japanese in WWII.

Even with its grueling pageant of torture and abuse at the hands of monstrously inhuman Japanese officers, Road never reaches the heart.

The movie is an anecdote, not a story.

The ensemble cast pulls out all the stops to ensure the deaths do shock and the heart is well and truly wrung.