The Road (2009)

User Rating:

8.4/10   

Director:

John Hillcoat

Writers:

Cormac McCarthy (novel)
Joe Penhall (adaptation) ...

Release Date:

25 November 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

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

Plot Keywords:

Post Apocalyptic | Family Relationships | Father Son Relationship | Pulitzer Prize Source | Coca Cola

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Charlize Theron	...	Wife
Viggo Mortensen	...	The Man
Robert Duvall	...	Old Man
Guy Pearce	...	The Veteran
Garret Dillahunt	...	The Gang Member
Brenna Roth	...	Road Gang Leader
Molly Parker	...	Veteran's Wife
Michael K. Williams	...	The Thief
Kodi Smit-McPhee	...	The Boy
Matt Reese	...	Well-Fed Cannibal
Jeremy Ambler	...	Man In Cellar #1
Jared Pfennigwerth	...	Militant Member
David August Lindauer	...	Man On Mattress
Bob Jennings	...	Bearded Man
Jack Erdie	...	Cannibal #1
Nick Pasqual	...	Militant #2
Chaz Moneypenny	...	Man In Cellar #2
Aaron Bernard	...	Militant
Mark Tierno	...	Baby Eater
Kirk Brown	...	Bearded Face
Amy Caroline	...	Woman In Cellar #1
Jarrod DiGiorgi	...	Well-Fed Cannibal
Kacey Byrne-Houser	...	Woman In Cellar #2
Shawn Rolly	...	Road Gang Member
Chris Sechler	...	Ghostly Boy
Kyle Quinn	...	Militant #1
Cerise Weidner	...	Woman In Cellar #3

MPAA:

Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language.

Runtime:

119 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #44940) | Finland:K-15 | Canada:14A (Ontario)

Filming Locations:

Abandoned Turnpike Tunnels, Breezewood, Pennsylvania, USA

Company:

2929 Productions

Trivia:

The movie's U.S. release date was postponed from November 26, 2008 to October 16, 2009, and then was further delayed to November 25, 2009.

Quotes:

[from trailer]
The Boy: Are we gonna die?
The Man: We are not gonna quit. We are gonna survive this.

A film without a personal vision from a book with a strong one

The major problem of the director was how to adapt a novel where the reader has the impression of entering into a nightmare from which he is waking up a different man.

Well, the power of the novel is to create a sort of metaphor of the world that Mc Carthy has created in all his books and that this metaphor is never more than the awareness of what is in front of us.

In that sense, "The Road" and "Blindness" (the novel of Nobel prize "Saramago") are two mirrors of the same image but with a different landscape. Saramago shows that landscape is secondary (the movie of Meireilles is also good at showing this), while Mc Carthy insists on a landscape but this is also secondary and a simple metaphor.

Unfortunately, John Hillcoat has decided to focus strongly on the digital transfer of Mc Carthy nightmare, with the result of a succession of nightmarish landscapes (but finally boring, because they are visualized and not imagined!). In its search for the fidelity to the text he has lost his own personal contribution to the movie (see the great difference with the other Mc Carthy recent adaptation: "No country for old men", showing both Mc Carthy and the personal vision of the Coen's).

Finally, what the book is excellent to do...leaving us in the incertitude to understand if this is a real landscape, a remote part of our mind that cannot be even imagined, in a sense a metaphor of what Mc Carthy has described in his other books, then the movie is totally incapable to represent.