Momoa writes Road to Paloma

Jason Momoa, The New 'Conan the Barbarian'His pet project, though, part of the 'Brown Bag Diaries' series of films in the works, is 'Road to Paloma,' a film he is co-writing and directing, which he hopes to release through his Pride of Gypsies production company. He promises, "it's a sucker punch."

JASON MOMOA:  I like [doing] movies where I can change a person's point of view. And that's what 'Paloma' is for me. Acting's not enough. I want to be behind the camera. I want to wear the many hats and obsess about it and make my true art.

It's like when I paint or when I play music, it's me, by myself, standing alone, [creating] a product and putting it out for everyone. And I'd rather keep my films small so that I don't have a billion people in on it. I'd rather it run Sundance. I'm not in it for making money. This one [Conan] is the one to make money. And I have fun. But at the end of the day, I want to leave my art.

And 'Paloma' is very much a road move, a revenge story. I wrote it myself about what's going on in the Native American reservations. There's a lot of rape going on there. ... If a white man was to come on an Indian reservation and rape a woman and they were to catch him...it still has to go to federal court. Federal courts are too busy dealing with terrorism. Seventy-five percent of all these cases are getting thrown out [of court]. ... Tribal law cannot prosecute anyone on tribal land. ... I'm married. I have a wife. I have a mother and two children. My mother gets raped and she gets put into a coma. And they catch the guy. He goes to court, and he gets released. We pick up the movie from right there.

What if someone hurts your family? I'm gonna eat 'em. I'm gonna ... kill them. And when I do that, what happens? I'm either on the run, or I'm going to die, or I'm going to prison. It's basically about the deconstruction of a man and the construction of another man. He comes back back after like 6 months and his mother has passed. And it's called 'Road to Paloma' because he's taking her ashes back to their home reservation. And on the way he's basically giving out last beautiful parts of his heart, his wings.Comment:  As noted in Jason Momoa in Johnson Family Vacation, Momoa is part Native. Like his idol Johnny Depp, he's apparently trying to get in touch with his Native roots. He's even trying to look like Depp.

If you strip out Momoa's fancy language, Road to Paloma sounds like a simple payback story. Man learns mother was killed, returns her ashes to the rez, encounters killer, goes on revenge spree. It sounds terribly unoriginal, like Death Wish or any number of revenge fantasies.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  Momoa does his Johnny Depp impression.