The Road
Director: John Hillcoat
With: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker, et al.
The post-apocalypse movie is a genre within itself, and goes back years. The World, The Flesh and the Devil; The Omega Man; Mad Max, etc. Despite its provenance (a Pulitzer Prize novel by Cormac McCarthy), a wonderful cast, and a great depressing-gray ambience, there is nothing new or interesting about this. A shame.
I didn’t read the book, so I have no idea how oversimplified the film’s take is on the novel’s ideas. A man (Mortensen) and his son (Smit-McPhee) are wandering toward “the coast” after an unspecified cataclysm. They must scrounge for food, fight off assorted baddies, and try to maintain their humanity. “Are we the good guys?” the kid asks.
In other words, minor variation #193 on the same old theme. The Road Warrior was far more fun than this, and made the same points. I don’t know if this could possibly be what won a Pulitzer for literature. I can only guess that director Hillcoat and writer Joe Penhall went for the lowest common denominators: the boogie-man horror show and the child in peril.
Didn’t work for me, although Mortensen made me watch it long after I lost interest. He is one of our best film actors, maybe of all time. I wonder what McCarthy thought after the check cleared.
C-