A beautifully understated and haunting adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s unforgettable novel from the director of THE PROPOSITION, here handling even grimmer material with just as much skill and maturity. By coincidence, this movie emerges in cinemas the same month as THE BOOK OF ELI, both of them road movies set in a dying world following an unspecific apocalyptic event. Both have a significant degree of hope at the very end to make them not wholly nihilistic experiences, though inevitably, (THE BOOK OF ELI being a mainstream action flick), it’s THE ROAD which, up to that point at least, is by far the boldest and most grueling of the two.
Flashbacks lacing the narrative give us sporadic glimpses of life before and just a hint of the fiery skies that signaled the end of all we knew. Even here there is no solace : Charlize Theron is a powerful presence as the doomed wife of our hero, a woman who quickly decides, in some of the most despairing moments, that she’d rather die alone than face what she knows is coming.
Fragments of the past aside, the movie is largely a two-hander and, in a story that offers no character names, Viggo Mortensen is simply outstanding. His is an award-caliber performance that turns the handsome, usually buff actor into a gaunt, physically and mentally declining bag of bones with a depleting sense of hope. He walks amidst the remnants of a dying Earth, very occasionally running into desperate or dangerous refugees. He has two bullets, which he has reserved so that both he and his young son (Kodi Smith-McPhee) have an easy way out if their position ever becomes too grim to bear. He devotes his joyless revised existence to keeping the lad safe and well, informing him of the dangers inherent in the devastated existence, though his own mounting paranoia and illness turns him into the kind of danger (to others) he warns about.
Mortensen’s remarkable, heart-breaking portrayal of the devoted father is at the core of this absorbing movie, as is the unforced, affecting on-screen bond shared by him and Smit-McPhee. The latter gives one of the finest child performances in recent memory, and together they give the movie its heart and soul.
John Hillcoat’s previous movie was visceral, down and dirty genre filmmaking. THE ROAD is a father-son story with a potent sense of despair, though it offers only fleeting visuals of the post-apocalyptic world’s descent into disease, cannibalism and madness (elements of which were more overt in the novel). The wintry, desolate locations, and the acting tell us all we need to know about the environment in which the action unfolds.
Enhanced, like THE PROPOSITION, by a gorgeously somber score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, it’s a moving, quietly devastating movie that moves at a deliberate pace and doesn’t’t condescend to its audience. Appearing in small supporting roles but virtually unrecognizable are Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce and Garret Dillahunt, all superb.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
