Movie Review Rewind: The Road (2009)

Brandon Vick flips the calendar back to 2009 for a look at Viggo Mortensen in The Road on this edition of Movie Review Rewind.

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Here we have another film that comes from the best-selling novel by Cormac McCarthy. I knew The Road would not be like No Country for Old Men. There’s no way. I have read both books and they are total opposites. But I was curious how The Road would come off the page and on to the screen. And I was left thinking maybe it should have never left the page in the first place.

The Road is about the death of the world. A post-apocalyptic environment where people have been left to die or to be eaten by others. No one really knows how many people are left alive and may never know. However, this film is not so much about our world ending as much as it is about a bond between a father and son and their survival.

A father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are on a journey south towards the ocean, and what and who they come across is almost unimaginable. They cannot even sleep peacefully because of the horrific atmosphere they live in. But the father lives to protect his son, and is preparing him for when he is no longer around. But the father can no longer tell who are the “good guys” and who are not. The Road truly is one big game of survival.

Charlize Theron plays the mother/wife who does not want to give birth to her son due to the harsh conditions he would be living in. She is only in flashback scenes and are the only scenes that have some color to them. For the most part, this film is washed out and has no warm colors at all, which looks amazing on-screen and really captures the emotional state of a dying landscape. And all of this becomes too much for the boy’s mother.

The Road shows signs of hope and goodness, but is overpowered by the brutality, the fear, and loss of faith from the survivors. Smit-McPhee is the boy who shows hope in a world that seems to have none. He is a great young actor and plays a kid who has always seen the world as cold and dark and nothing else. It is so bad that the boy does not even know what Coca-Cola is. The boy has seen the awful and the terrible, but somehow keeps positive and keeps moving forward. Even in a place where food is scarce, the boy wants to feed others and not just himself. McPhee’s character is a flash of hope and promise of a better world.

The boy could not have made it without his father, and I say the same thing when it comes to Smit-McPhee and Mortensen. Mortensen is a great actor, but he really strikes that emotional nerve. He plays a man who has lost his wife and will sacrifice himself for his boy. Mortensen plays the father with compassion and heart, but he is not afraid to kill in order to save him and his son. The father tries to stay strong for his boy, but is just as scared as he is. They share a bond on-screen like the father and son do in the book. The performances from these two guys is fantastic, fearless, and heart-breaking.

Now that I have praised the acting, I must criticize the film. It is no secret that this film would be a downer. The book is the same way. But the book is able to keep you enthralled and entertained. You are anticipating what the father and son will encounter next. The film has a rough time doing the same. The encounters seem to come across as random events thrown in. The pace of the film stays too slow and it never seems to be as thrilling as it should be.

So why did the director, John Hillcoat, want to turn this story in to a film? I really could not tell you. The Road is a unique story that was told very well by the words that McCarthy wrote. And Hillcoat took on the challenge to try to translate McCarthy’s words in to visuals, and perhaps it was too big of a challenge.

The look of The Road is amazing. The performances in The Road are incredible. I just wish the film would have been like the book. And maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part.  But the book was able to deliver more thrills and excitement than the film could, and the film just did not seem as interesting as when I was reading it. Perhaps if I read the book after I saw the film I would feel differently, but I doubt it.

Brandon Vick is a member of The Music City Film Critics’ Association and the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and the star of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. Follow him on Twitter @SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.

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