Filmikaze!

By: John Hillcoat (director), Cormac McCarthy (novel), Joe Penhall (screenplay)

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker, Michael K. Williams

A post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his son trying to survive by any means possible.

I’m a sucker for a post-apocalyptic story, but I’ll be the first to admit that they usually tend to be a lot of the same. While The Road isn’t all that different in particulars, it manages to set itself apart by being unflinchingly real, and for that I definitely have to commend the people who made it.

There isn’t a lot to say regarding the storyline here because there really isn’t much of one, but that seems to serve the film well, adding to its powerful simplicity. Here is a world where hope is a very rare commodity, and within it exists a man and his young son, in whom he stays tethered to his own humanity. Terms like “gritty” and “raw” get bandied about a lot with regards to films that often don’t deserve them, so I’m hesitant to use them here. However, I’ve got to assert that this film, with it’s stark candor in depicting human nature, is oftentimes more brutal than any slasher flick could ever be in the way it breaks your heart.

Anchored by a steady and honest portrayal by Viggo Mortensen, every, single role in The Road is played beautifully, even the ones we only see for a brief time. Michael K. Williams and Robert Duvall were especially spectacular, but I really cannot praise the acting in this movie enough. Everyone was wonderful.

I’ve not read the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that The Road is based on, but I can’t see how John Hillcoat could have made the movie any better. This isn’t a fun movie, it isn’t going to buoy your spirits, and it may just make you cry, but it is genuinely good and absolutely worth seeing.