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MovieMail's Review
This astounding piece of filmmaking, starring Viggo Mortensen and based on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer prize winning novel, looks and feels all too real, says Milo Wakelin.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote No Country for Old Men, The Road is a harrowing post-apocalyptic tale of hope and survival that boasts an outstanding central performance from Viggo Mortensen.
Following an unnamed catastrophe, all that remains of human civilisation are desolate highways, abandoned cars and ruined vending machines. In this bleak vision of the near future, nature has not returned to reclaim the earth - the mysterious disaster has withered the trees, killed the crops and filled the sky with ash; even the cockroaches have croaked. Despite the desperate ingenuity of the few scattered human survivors, they cannot conjure food out of thin air. So the strong literally prey upon the weak, who scavenge and starve while they try to evade capture.
Mindful of this, and unable to conceive that his young boy will find safety in anyone's care but his own, an unnamed Man (Viggo Mortensen) heads out with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) on a forced march towards the sea. It's less a practical plan for survival and more a way of keeping hope for hope's sake; the planet itself is dying and the Man carries a pistol with two remaining bullets for himself and his son. Their road, it seems, can only have one end.
In A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007), Mortensen established himself as a leading man of quiet power and great sensitivity, and it is difficult to imagine another performer doing justice to the role of the determined survivalist and obsessively devoted father. Pallid, muddy and painfully bedraggled, he uses every trick in the method actor's playbook - including the one of making you forget that he is an actor in the first place. Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron make brief, effective appearances, but the film is essentially a two-hander, following the relationship between father and son, "each the other's world entire", in the words of the novel. John Hillcoat also directed The Proposition (2005) - another visually striking film of bleak landscapes and grime-lined faces - but in The Road the colour palette is starkly monochromatic; the shambling survivors, wrapped in shabby blankets and plastic bags held together with masking tape, blend in with the refuse-strewn scenery.
Shot in a variety of outdoor locations, including abandoned coal-mines and areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, The Road feels all-too real. Despite moments of horror, this disturbing, thought-provoking film derives its power from its depiction of the ties that bind father and son, and for its heartbreaking depiction of a dying world.
Walking into Darkness: John Hillcoat’s The Road - featurette with director Hillcoat discussing the elements of The Road
The Road: A comedy: 2 x short scenes of from B-roll footage - the strip tease from Michael K Williams (the Thief scene undressing) & the mock epic fight between Viggo & Kodi
The Road: A gallery - stills from behind the scenes
Film Description
An astounding piece of filmmaking based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, The Road portrays the epic post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son across the burnt-out wasteland of a post-apocalyptic America. Viggo Mortensen plays the man who, along with his son, tries to survive by any means possible as they follow a desolate, corpse-strewn road towards the coast, where they hope to find some kind of a future for themselves. Travelling with only the clothes they are wearing, a small cart of scavenged food and a pistol with two bullets as protection, they struggle to survive in the ravaged landscape, encountering a few other desperate survivors along the way.
