End of the Road | 2022 | R | – 4.6.6

Why is “End of the Road” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “some strong/bloody violence, drug use, sexual content, and language.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a groping scene with a teen, a couple of kissing scenes, several scenes of fights and arguments that lead to gunfire exchanges or fight sequences with some ending in death and injuries including bloody wounds, and 16 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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A widow (Queen Latifah), her two kids, and her brother (Ludacris) drive from California to Texas to live with her mother. At a motel, they witness a violent murder connected with a mysterious drug kingpin, and after being threatened and assaulted by the kingpin and his men, they must fight for their lives. Also with Beau Bridges, Frances Lee McCain, Jesse Luken, Keith Jardine, Shaun Dixon and Mychala Faith Lee. Directed by Millicent Shelton. [Running Time: 1:30]

End of the Road SEX/NUDITY 4

 – A man and a teen girl kiss for several seconds, the man rubs her breasts under her shirt and we see the skin of her side and abdomen. A man and a woman kiss for a few seconds.
► Several men whistle at a teen girl and beckon her to come to them and when she flips her middle finger at them and walks away (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details), they become angry. A white man sneers and says to a Black woman, “Once you go white, you don’t never walk right.”
► A few men are shirtless and we see their bare chest, abdomen and back.

End of the Road VIOLENCE/GORE 6

 – Two men with drawn handguns argue over a duffel bag: one man shoots the other in the forehead (we see some blood spray to the sides of his head) and we later see the dead man lying on the ground with one eye open and some dried blood under his head. A flashback includes an older man kicking in a motel room door and attacking a younger man; a fight ensues that includes kicking, punching, slamming each other into walls, and the older man pinning the other man against a wall and using a handgun to shoot him in the side of the throat (blood flows from the wound). A family wakes up to shouting and pounding next door and then hear a gunshot, a car drives away fast and a woman and a man look into the room next door: the door is broken and a man sits, panting, with blood pouring from a throat wound; the man dies and we see him taken away in a body bag the next morning.
► A man and a woman with shotguns escape from a locked basement when the man kicks down the door, they chase a car with a family in it and shoot at them several times as the woman in the first car shoots back at them cracking the windshield; the chase continues with squealing tires and gunshots from both vehicles, one passenger lights and tosses a flare into the other car, causing a small fire while a shotgun backfires into a woman’s face (blood spews) as she tries to hit the other car, and a man cries as the pursuit car swerves and smashes into a tree and he is thrown out of the car, slams against a tree, slams back onto the hood of the car, and the car explodes.
► A woman drives fast and erratically to a motel where she finds that a duffel bag of money that she hid is missing, she sees a woman carrying the bag toward a car, a car chase ensues and the two cars speed onto a sandlot, where one rear ends the other several times, one car overturns and lands on its roof, and the other woman approaches the overturned car with a ball bat, smashes out the driver’s side glass and shouts for the duffel bag to be returned; a man with a shotgun and three other men surround the women, the woman in the overturned car exits the car (she seems unharmed), takes the ball bat and knocks out the other woman, who wakes up later that night with her wrists bound (please see the Substance Use category for more details); she gets loose but a man with a shotgun stomps on her hands and she screams, five other men threaten and punch her, she fights them off with kicks, punches, a head-butt, and throws, she kicks one man’s knee to break it inside out (he screams and falls), she shoots another man in the thigh (we see some blood as he screams and falls), two other men are knocked down with a metal pole, and the woman picks up a rifle and points it at the men left standing.
► In a town in Texas, a Black teen girl flips her middle finger at two white men who are bothering her and she gets into her family car with her mother, uncle, and preteen brother; the two men get into their pickup truck and chase the car, rear end it four times and sideswipe it running it off the road and the woman and the two men exit their vehicles; the men threaten her and her kids and show her a large rifle in their front seat, they force her to say, “I am sorry I endangered your white lives” as she trembles and the two men drive off fast, laughing and whooping, and the woman goes back to her car and reprimands her daughter. A man drives a teen girl and a man to his house, he releases a drugged young boy from the trunk of his car (we see the boy groggy with duct tape over his mouth) and the man locks the other man, the teen and the young boy in a basement, calls the kids’ mother on the phone, and threatens to kill her family if she does not bring him a bag of money.
► A man and two children break a window to escape a locked basement and a dog rushes toward them barking and snapping (the teen girl has blood on one hand, probably from a dog bite and she wraps a cloth around it); a man points a rifle at them, the other man pulls a rope attached to a large tub of bleach in the rafters, dousing the threatening man with it and he screams as the three run upstairs, where a woman attacks the teen girl with long scissors, the teen knocks her down and later hits her in the head with a frying pan, but she gets up again, they struggle, the man intervenes, and the woman stabs him in the thigh; he shouts and the woman grabs a cleaver and approaches the girl until the boy points a handgun at the woman, the teen girl takes the gun and points it at the woman and the man puts her into the basement and bolts the door shut.
► A young boy argues with his mother and goes alone to a washroom in a busy Wild West attraction; he never comes back and we hear he was kidnapped by a drug lord and a computerized voice on a phone threatens to kill the boy unless she finds a bag of money and delivers it to the kidnapper.
► Two male actors stage a fake showdown in a Wild West attraction where we hear a gunshot and one of the actors falls down, unharmed. A woman swerves her car on a road to miss a coyote and hits a tree but is unharmed and her car has a small dent. A man digs a bullet out of a mirror that is cracked and splattered with blood.
► A woman is angry because she lost her house and argues loudly with and berates a chronically angry man, a teen girl, and a preteen boy because of their selfish, out-of-control, and foolish behaviors throughout the film; she slaps the man hard in the face in one scene. A captain berates a deputy for allowing a family to leave because they are in danger of being murdered. A family has a loud pillow fight until someone in a neighboring room pounds on the wall for them to stop. A woman tells two men that a duffel bag they have belongs to a drug lord and the men quickly give the bag to her.
► We hear that a man needed chemotherapy and radiation he could not afford and his wife lost their house because of medical bills. A woman stares at her husband’s empty hospital bed at home before the family moves. Two men argue loudly and one man insults the other man’s race. Two women argue for several seconds. A teen girl cries in fear and later argues with a woman for several seconds. A young boy cries for a few seconds, and a woman cries for a few seconds in three scenes.
► We hear a toilet flushing off-screen in a few scenes; in one of the scenes, a man exits the bathroom and tells others not to enter because it will smell bad for an hour. A woman runs away from the camera into a bathroom, kneels quickly, retches, and we hear her cough and vomit (we see no vomit). A man and a boy pretend to snore loudly, and later, the man snores loudly when he sleeps. A man snores loudly.

End of the Road LANGUAGE 6

 – About 16 F-words and its derivatives, 1 obscene hand gesture, 16 scatological terms, 15 anatomical terms, 34 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, psycho, schizophrenic, weird, stupid, fool, cracker, liar, thief, evil, stinky-head, lightweights, pipsqueak, White, Big Mama, Martha Stewart), exclamations (shut-up, shut it, oh my gosh, whoo), 2 religious profanities (GD), 25 religious exclamations (e.g. oh God, oh my God, thank God, Jesus Christ, Holy [scatological term deleted], for the love of God, the Lord is our savior, I swear to God, Amen, 3 prayers by a woman to her dead husband, a family prayer to God). | profanity glossary |

End of the Road SUBSTANCE USE

 – A man and a teen girl smoke marijuana cigarettes in two scenes, a woman tells a man he smells like stinky “weed,” and a man on a road trip says he did not bring any “weed” with him. A loud outdoor party in the desert includes several men and a woman drinking from whiskey and beer bottles.

End of the Road DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Illness, death, financial loss, chronic stress and anger, praying to dead people, bigotry, racial differences, murder, drug cartels, proliferation of gun violence in Texas, money, power, intimidation, deceit, corruption, danger, fear, impulsiveness, courage, survival, starting over.

End of the Road MESSAGE

 – Catastrophic illness can badly affect Black families more than white families and subsequent survival can be difficult.