The Road
Review - Bobby Belt for The Mungles on Movies
I really like Viggo Mortensen. He's great in Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, Lord of the Rings, etc. Mortensen doesn't work a lot either. Much like Daniel Day-Lewis, it's not that he can't get work, it's that he would rather pick and choose projects.
Viggo's latest choice is The Road. A film directed by John Hillcoat (He directed The Proposition) and based off the book of the same title by Cormac McCarthy (He is the one who wrote the book that 2008's Best Picture winner No Country for Old Men was based off of)
So Viggo, Hillcoat, McCarthy...couldn't possibly fail, right? Well, not so fast. It's not a bad movie, but it's certainly not a great one.
The Road follows a father (Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) trying to survive in a cannibalistic, post-apocalyptic world. It's cold, gray, and without any sort of plant life. The sort of scary world people might envision if there was ever nuclear war.
The film opens with the father and son trying to find anywhere warm and safe to stay as they head south. The first five minutes or so are some really nice shots of the gray world they live in. The power of the shots would have been enough, but instead the director opts for a narration from the father describing life and the way it is. This was a bit frustrating for me. I thought the images themselves, as the father and son walk along an empty road, was enough to get the point across. The narration felt a little like "This may be too subtle...let's make sure the audience knows what we're trying for here"
As the father and son move along down the road, we see the same scenario played over and over again. They rest somewhere, think it's safe for the moment, and then find that it's not. They move a little further down the road, and repeat the scenario. Rest, think it's safe, it's not.
It's all in the hopes of getting south and to the ocean. Hoping there is some sort of genuine life there. They don't want to survive, they want to live. Heading for the ocean seems to be the only option remaining.
Spliced into the film are seemingly random flashbacks to right after whatever catastrophic event led to the world being what it now is. The film never explains what happened some years ago. Just that something happened involving fire and it scorched most the earth.
The reason why I say these flashbacks are random is because it goes back to the time when his wife was with the two of them and tries to show why they may be a little bitter in their walk. Just like with the narration, this may have been something that would have been more effective had it been referenced in the present a little bit, rather than fully shown in flashbacks.
The acting is decent. Not really great, which was a little disappointing. The standouts, for me, were the son, Kodi Smit-McPhee and a very brief (And I'm talking about two minutes or so) appearance from Guy Pearce. He's good with the little time given to him in the same way that Donald Sutherland was in JFK.
The Road is Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language. There's some cannibalism and general scary sense throughout the entire film. Probably not something the kids should see.
Overall, I'd give The Road 3 out of 5. It's a nice father/son story, but it could have used a little more subtlety.
|
