The Road - film review

What happened to the world is unknown. Ash covers the ground, the sun has been blocked out, and everybody has given up hope and either committed suicide or done the unthinkable and turned to cannibalism for food. Everyone except a few of the "good guys" that roam the world trying surviving and finding a place they can call home. This story focuses on a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his only son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are travelling down "the road" that will take them to the Eastern U.S. Coast and then they will head down south. What's down south? Nobody knows. More people? More food? Warmer climates? They don't know but they know it's the only place to go that's away from these cannibalistic looters. They are freezing and starving and the only thing to defend them is a revolver that has two shells (one actually after Viggo shoots a man in the head who threatened his son) so their situation really makes you depressed for them. I won't spoil the ending but I will say, bring some tissues cause I almost shed a tear but I held strong and took in the ending.

As a fan of the book, I had a lot of expectation for this movie. It did pay off, Cormac McCarthy books are well-written, and unless you can tolerate the fact he doesn't use punctuation in his books apart from periods and questions marks and the occasional commas. But Cormac's fame in Hollywood was brought up because of the Coen Brothers' film adaptation for "No Country for Old Men" a film that received the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director for the Coens, Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem and Best Adapted Screenplay for the Coens. Once again, "The Road" is well directed by John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") who uses on-location sets on the hills and forests of Mt. St. Helens and the beaches of Canon Beach, Oregon. I was really impressed how he managed to use still-desecrated area from the 1980 eruption to incorporate it into the film.

The cinematography, directing, and acting are the main highlights of this film by far. Viggo's performance you saw from the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy is completely gone. He plays a convincing, hard-battered father who's won't let hell get in his way to keeping his son safe and to what's down south. What you see of him in the film is literally what he had to do to himself to make him looks like he had been suffering, tired and starving. Kodi also does a phenomenal job playing the boy; he convincingly plays a child that acts how one would react under these bleak times of fear, starvation and death. What I really want to know is what kind of father teaches his son how to put a gun in his mouth and tell him to pull the trigger? Well, normally I would complain but with the fear of cannibals at hand, it makes sense that one would rather kill oneself than endure the heavy torture of being raped and then cooked and eaten alive before they kill you. Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall have short roles in this film but they really bring the audience a sense of some hope but they also remind you of the bleak future that lies ahead. Charlize Theron plays the wife of the Viggo character in a series of flashbacks that show they were a normal couple that were raising a child until, whatever the hell happened to make the world suck, and she starts to give up on the world and she tries to convince her husband to commit suicide but he rejects the idea, so she goes off and dies.

If I could say anything negative about this film it's that because I had read the book, I already knew what was happening but the film didn't seem as depressing as the novel. But overall, I really liked this film. One thing I would recommend to young people is go see this film with a parent, cause nothing can bring you closer to your parent than seeing a father care for his son like they presented here. The acting is amazing, I've seen great acting from Viggo before but nothing like what he put himself into here and Kodi, even as a starting actor, he really gave something strong and amazing in his first major role. Cinematography is amazing and the acting is fantastic.

My Rating: A Depressing but Great Waste of my Time