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54 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
I smell Oscar Noms!, 13 September 2009
Author: tomthumb1 from Toronto, Canada

I expect when Oscar nominations are announced next year, you will see at least 2 nominations; Best Picture and Best Actor. What I am not certain of is who will be named as the nominee for Best Actor. Will it be Viggo, who is wonderful in the film, or will it be Kodi Smit-McPhee for doing an amazing performance as boy. I am hopeful that it will be Kodi because, as good as Mortensen is in The Road, I have come to expect that from him.. Kodi has come out of nowhere and has become "The Boy".

I saw this film at TIFF and was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting a depressing film that was going to be emotionally draining. What I got was a chance to view a well done film with very minor supporting roles from some very strong actors, and two performances that were wonderful to behold.

I would recommend this film to anyone who wants to be entertained and have a quality evening out at the local movie theatre. You will not be disappointed.

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15 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
I don't want to just survive … The Road, 22 September 2009

Author: babubhaut from buffalo, ny, usa

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Despite a trailer that was cut to bring in disaster film audiences, Bobby was safe from my wrath because it appeared his brother and he let Hillcoat's vision stick, creating one of the best films of the year thus far. Please do not take the preview as gospel, because it does a terrible job marketing the movie. This is an independent production with very dark tones—one scene with a basement full of people held captive, thin and missing limbs, as food storage for the monsters living above is just one example—as well as a riveting story dealing with life, death, family, and sacrifice. The make of a father is tested when the world is at an end. If it is between putting a bullet into the head of your child rather than allow him to be eaten, one must come to grips with mortality and pride. If the world around you is disappearing, burning, becoming a land of criminals, is it good enough to just survive? When you get away from whatever trouble is in your backyard, is it enough when you just have to continue running with a new test awaiting you? There is no safe haven; no piece of earth hidden from the horrors that have taken over … to live is to run.

Don't be surprised when the big names you heard were in the film don't appear until late or show up for very brief stints when they do. Some are seen only in flashbacks, others are blips on the radar as "The Man" and his "Son" journey, day by day, to live for the next. The Road is all about Viggo and young Kodi Smit-McPhee, (who is great—many are hailing him as a revelation, but I think time will tell on that one), as they come across allies as well as their share of villains too. Small roles notwithstanding, both Garret Dillahunt, as a hick trucker looking for red meat of any kind, and Robert Duvall, as an old vagabond trying to mind his own business in the wasteland, are outstanding. Especially Duvall, who I'll admit has been phoning in some performances of late with too much gravitas. His "Old Man"—can you sense a theme with the character names—is subtle and real, wrinkles and crags making up his face, dirt and grime coating it all. Hillcoat knows how to let an environment consume his viewers, leaving nothing to be pretty for pretty's sake. Like his Australian western of two years ago, the lack of showers and clean, running water is noticeable throughout.

There aren't any explosions or big time battles between good and evil; all those shots of news footage used in the trailer as though our central family watched them on television do not exist. One day a husband and his pregnant wife were enjoying their lives when disaster struck. It doesn't matter what the cause was or where it started, all we need to be aware of is that the destruction was all encompassing, worldwide, and unstoppable. The morality of letting a child be born into a life of fear and death becomes an early theme, the birth of Smit-McPhee's character a question mark in his first days. Going through so much for that son, Mortensen lives for nothing else, his own life expendable as long as when he goes he knows the boy has a chance. What chance that is, no one knows. The next day could bring the discovery of a hidden bunker full of non-perishables; it could bring a loner vagrant passing by while they sleep to steal all they have accumulated; or it could mean seeing the enemy over the hills, on the verge of discovering them, causing their lives' worth to be left in favor of a rapid getaway. The real beauty of the film is how it never lulls or takes a shortcut. You will be on the edge of your seat for the duration, waiting to see when the moment will come that they can't get away.

A story of hope, it is also one of hardship and sacrifice. Some risk everything for another; some risk themselves in order to survive. When the choice becomes finding a man to eat or take from an unsuspecting child, sometimes you have to do the lesser of two evils no matter how much of your soul it takes with it. Mortensen embodies these sentiments, but so do others along the way. I must mention Michael K. Williams as "The Thief", a man so lost on his own journey of survival that he just can't help himself. You know that he is a man of honor and kindness that had no choice, but then you must think of the fact that he did, he could have allowed himself to die rather than take from innocents. But that's the rub, no one is innocent, not even "The Boy" as evidenced when Smit-McPhee yells at his father to say that he also must face what's going on each day. Viggo isn't shielding him from the terrors around every corner; just because he is young doesn't mean he hasn't grown up quick; it's all he could do to stay sane and move along with all the pains of his past and knowledge of those still to come. It's a tough watch, but well worth the time and effort to see a true masterpiece of tone and humanity—the good parts and the bad.

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9 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Faithful adaptation that still offers something new, 19 October 2009

Author: DanielKing from London, England

Just got back from seeing THE ROAD.

I had been very impressed by the novel and was concerned about how it would be adapted. The tone of the novel is almost unremittingly bleak and a 100% faithful adaptation would be very difficult to watch.

I'm happy to report that the film is very good indeed. It solves the problem of being unendurably depressing by concentrating on the emotional impact of the unspecified Armageddon, rather than the day to day fight for food, shelter and so on. So while at times it remains very upsetting it is shot through with hope rather than despair. I always felt the end of the novel was somewhat out of kilter with the rest of it but in the film it seems quite appropriate.

I think the film is more about the collapse of civility rather than civilization: for a film that shows the last remnants of mankind struggling to eke out an existence it is remarkably concerned with relationships. That's probably why the exact cause of the catastrophe is left blank: the film isn't really about the end of the world so much as the end of society. It's an interesting companion piece to NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN in which an ageing man sees nothing but horror in the modern world. In THE ROAD a man convinces himself, for the sake of his son, that humanity will abide even in the face of appalling conditions.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
"You must think I'm from another world.", 21 October 2009

Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

The wonderful thing about the Road is that it will more than likely please the two camps: the one that has not read Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer prize-winning book, and the one that has. There's the nervous feeling one gets when watching the theatrical trailer, though - will it be this super action-packed spectacle, will those images that open the trailer with "THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR!" stick around, and will Charlize Theron actually be in the movie that much? As it turns out, if you liked the book very much and worried about how its uber-bleak and incredibly dark and (especially) gray landscapes would appear, it provides that perfectly. And if you haven't read the book... it still works as a movie, as a simple-but-not story of a father and son survival drama- and clinging on to their humanity- first, and then a post-apocalypse thriller far second.

To describe the plot is not impossible but sort of unnecessary. All you need to know going in (if you're part of not-read-book camp) is that a father and son, after becoming on their own after the mother of the house exits, are traveling together across a true post-apocalypse landscape to a coast. We never are given a fully clear explanation as to why or how the apocalypse happened. This is more than fine; because John Hillcoat's film centers on the father and son (called in the credits simply Father and Son, played by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee), there doesn't need to be anything really specific. At least this will be fine for most people who may be by now tired of the usual viral or religious or (damn) 2012-type explanations. We're given hints though, to be sure, that there may have been mutations or some kind of earth-bound phenomenon (earthquakes happen a couple of times), and past this we, like the travelers, are left to our own devices.

How it happened isn't as fascinating and visually compelling, anyway, than how it looks. The Road provides us many scenes and vistas that are precisely grim and desolate and terrible. Some of these are full of visual details like big city-scape shots, and others, like when the Father and Son are on the ramp of a highway, is intimate and hard (this setting also provides one of the most touching moments as Mortensen's character finally 'lets go' of two important details from the deceased mother of his son). And other times Hillcoat lets us just take in the gray-ness of everything, just as one could take in the sight of masses of flies in his film the Proposition. It's against this backdrop of rain and sludge and grime and decay that imbues this intense bond between the father and son so greatly, and the complexity that comes with not just staying alive but retaining humanity and dignity and doing right and wrong by the people they encounter.

This may not be news to people who read the book. I still, having read it two years ago (which sadly seems like long ago in usually remembering specific images of a book), can't get the descriptions of scenes out of my head, or the stark manner of how characters talked and dread and existential horror was relayed. But, again, the film not only respects this but gives it further life. Dialog scenes in the movie- save for a couple of the flashback scenes with Charlize Theron's Mother character- are never obtrusive to the storytelling, which is a rightful concern to have with an adaptation of the book. And, more importantly, the acting and chemistry between the two leads is incredible. Mortensen is a given to be an actor embedded in his character, so much so that when he takes off his shirt we see his bony torso as being really that, and watching him is magnetic. Yet it's also crucial to see how good the kid Smit-McPhee is too, especially when it comes time for scenes where the boy has to deal with his father's growing desperation or the electrifying showdown with a thief.

To be sure, a couple of walk-on roles by Guy Pearce as another fellow traveler and especially Robert Duvall as a "90 year old man" as his character says provide some needed space, and Hillcoat has a couple of very wise flashback/dream bits with The Man and his wife (namely a very small, brilliant moment at a piano), but it's the all on the two main character to lead the film, and it's on them that it delivers so strongly. As long as you know that this is a film centered not on big action sequences (though there are a couple), and not on big special effects (though there's that too), and it's more akin to a life-or-death-and-what-else story not unlike Grave of the Fireflies, you'll know what you're getting with the Road.

It is very depressing on the whole, and not exactly what I would recommend as a 'first-date' movie - unless you're so hot for Mortensen and/or Cormac McCarthy you don't care either way. However, it's *good* depressing, and equally the best adaptation of the book possible while a tremendous, original vision for the casual movie-goer.

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14 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Ruined by an intrusive score, 19 October 2009

Author: rupcousens from Oxford, UK

I was expecting this to be a highlight of the London Film Festival, but I found it a little disappointing.

The production design can't be faulted - just about every scene looks as I imagined when reading the book, blasted CGI cityscapes used sparingly to situate real, local desolation redolent of '28 Days Later'. The performances were fine, the use of flashback effective, and the storytelling faithful. Why then did I find it strangely unmoving? Perhaps if I'd come without knowledge of the novel, I wouldn't have found the film too often an exercise in 'box-ticking' of major scenes, lacking real directorial vision. But I think I would still have found Joe Penhall's script rather reductive in its focus on the 'good guys'/'bad guys' dichotomy, as articulated by the boy - throughout, I always wanted to hear more of Viggo's voice-over instead. And I was irritated by the persistently intrusive music, so keen to tell me what to feel about each scene that my emotions rebelled into numbness. When a musical instrument is one of the key motifs dividing idyllic past from bleak present, it's all the more inappropriate to have an orchestra swelling with indiscriminate plangency over everything.

A visual triumph, then, and a passable précis for those who haven't read the book - but if you were hoping for a bold re-imagining of McCarthy's novel, you may find the film wanting.

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0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Never losing hope even in a post-apocalyptic environment!, 3 November 2009

Author: janyeap from Washington, DC

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Adapted from Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize novel of the same title, John Hillcoat's film is as much a virtually grabbing masterpiece as McCarthy's elegantly worded and sensuous masterpiece that transcends, at oft times, into prose and repetitions.

Like in the beginning of McCarthy's novel, the viewers are plunged into the film's dark and ash-filtered environment in which the story's unnamed protagonist is witnessed as protecting his son. Indeed. he is taking charge to get himself and his eleven-year old son out of the grim, barren, non-redeeming, silent and godless world. Examine the bleak post-apocalyptic topography that could very possibly be the resulting impact from disasters of nuclear wars or from global warming! Indeed, with everything they can salvage onto a grocery cart or into their knapsacks, they must hit the empty road ahead to find a safe place. And thus begins our gradual discovery of how the man and his son hold on to their souls, knowing nothing is guaranteed as apocalypse impacts the world. Can our protagonist keep up his hope and optimism when the worst of humanity does take over the souls of desperate survivors? Ha, will there be a possibility of civilization? In an apocalyptic world, we can expect humans to sacrifice their humanity as their price of survival.

This is an apocalypse thriller that's so phenomenally dark, and yet the persisting and unconditional love and bond, between the film's protagonist and his son, never cease to deliver the whispers of hope throughout their journey. It is their untarnished strengths, despite the appalling challenges, that are so terrific to behold. Indeed, Director Hillgoat has captured a beautiful father-son love story and their rise above the grim imaginings. Indeed, he has wonderfully delivered his lively characterizations of both as their humanly earnest defense against everything that could go wrong. I was truly awed by what I observed.

Mortensen is incredibly wonderful to follow. Watch out for that very precious moment when the son first felt his connection to his father! I'm indeed grateful to see Charize Theron's character being given more depth and weight in the film version. Oh yes, one of the most memorable scenes revolve around Robert Duvall's Old Man, and in a very meaningful way as well. The Boy connects with humanism, yet we see his father as being too afraid to really let his son get his way. Yet, it's the point in which the trainee becomes the trainer; the pupil becomes the teacher! And it's the first time we see both father and son in disagreement. And their encounter with Michael K. Williams' Thief doesn't help to cool down their temperament either. Spanish Cinematographer, Javier Aguirresarobe has delivered apocalyptic landscape and atmosphere in amazing forms that are totally mesmerizing. Observe how nature can no longer provide refuge to prevent human destruction, and scavengers hunt for food, including human flesh! And when Guy Pearce as the Veteran and Molly Parker's character as his wife appear in the scenes, it's debatable if the Boy has found 'the good guys' and whether they would be 'carrying the fire'!

Indeed, Director Hillcoat has terrifically captured the love story between parent and child, leaving the audience with increasing hope and optimism. Yep, the parent-child interactions emancipate an incredibly enormous and redeeming appeal... even when things get worse and far from being better. "We are not gonna quit. We are gonna survive this," the Man had said to the Boy at the most dreaded moment in the film. The Man in the story, indeed, is perpetually faced with his last chance of parenting, teaching, training and preparing his son for the worst scenario to come, in a world, so deprived of life, hope and optimism. And it's truly interesting to observe the Boy's extraordinary and constant inner battle between his mortal fear and his basic goodness. The father understands that the Boy is his warrant, and that 'if he's not the word of God, God never spoke.' Yep, the film's plot and sub-plots stay pretty faithful to McCarthy's novel. And I love Hilcot's changed version of the Man's wife, fabulously performed by Chalize Theron. And his treatment to the ultimate decision made by Charlize Theron's character gets my high approval over the troubling and traumatic decision she took in the book. Yes, indeed, Charlize Theron's character realizes the lack of food supplies as well as the existence of only two bullets left for the family of three, and like any good mother, she makes the toughest choice in leaving her husband and child to fend for one another's survival. And that brings me to think of the idiom: Two's a company; three's a crowd! However, Hillcoat did admit at the Q&A session, I attend, that the changed treatment was a hell of a decision for him to make. Having read the book, I'm happy for the change. Also, I love this film's flashbacks of the good memories shared by the Man and his wife. The Director did mention that the love story, between father and son, should also take consideration of the mother's influences, and that good things tend to be taken too much for granted.

The persistence of love between a father and a son against the ugly backdrop of the world is so magnificently portrayed by Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. I would be frankly disappointed if Mortensen doesn't garner an Oscar nomination for his role in this film. Definitely, this is a powerful and remarkably crafted film not to be missed by the indie-film buffs looking for a great state-of-the art film with enough metaphors, symbols, and references to decipher!

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1 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Doesn't live up to the book's power, 21 October 2009

Author: Fierce Hairdo from United Kingdom

I loved McCarthy's book. But the film drops the ball several times. It's frustrating because at odd moments it really clicks and you get a glimpse of how it could have come closer to the novels overwhelming power. My biggest bugbear was the very obvious clear sunlight in a number of scenes. In the book the world is meant to be an ash covered, dark, freezing place with permanent, heavy, grey cloud cover. There aren't meant to be any sunny days in this dead world yet the man and the boy are often are bathed in bright sunlight (this is worst in the scene when the man takes the clothes of the thief - we're meant to feel the thief is going to die of exposure yet he's standing in the sun!). This really punctured the illusion of a destroyed world that in other scenes had been recreated so carefully. The cannibals seemed a bit cartoony (a bit too Mad Max). And there were too many hollywoody genre tics like the POV shots of the Man and the Boy on the beach indicating they're being followed. This story needed a more austere, uncompromising treatment and style of someone like Haneke. To be fair, the film is quite good and the acting strong. It's just that expectations from fans of the book are so high that it needed to be a masterpiece to satisfy. And it isn't.

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1 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
a road poorly travelled, 25 October 2009

Author: alan fair from United Kingdom

First, in the words of the old joke, when asked the way to the hospital the old man replies, "don't start from here." McCarthy's undoubted masterpiece, Blood Meridian' is still waiting to be made, given that ol' Sam Peckinpah has left us may I plead for the great American director at work today, P.T. Anderson, to give it a go. Anyone tackling such difficult source material has my sympathy. McCarthy's work is what R. Barthes called writerly as opposed to readerly. That is, his work makes demands on the reader, a reader's pleasure is derived from the sheer chutzpah of McCarthy's prose. Reading his novels is a sheer joy but also a task gargantuan, for example 'Blood Meridian' seems to demand that we should read 'Moby Dick' as a kind of parallel text. Well,I sympathise with anyone taking on 'The Road', this novel is a winding ribbon of words that seems visual but on refection is in fact a discourse on the condition of humans more suited to philosophical rumination than Hollywood animation. I was, subsequently disappointed with the film but feel unable to really criticise either the actors or the people behind the camera. My only specific carp would be the inability of the film makers to produce an adequate sound-scape. If the sense of destiny was to be articulated it was in what people hear not what they see which would have enhanced the cinematic quality of the film, the howling indifference of isolation might have been made concrete by a Michael Mann, let's say. I never really got the sense of desolation that is invoked by McCarthy's prose.The two central characters, admirably played by the central actors, work hard to carry the idea of a futile travelling forward but the film, which begins with a flashback,doesn't seem to have the courage to explain the existential dilemma of being alone in a threatening environment.The film fails to enhance the broken poetics of the novel's vision, at times falling into cliché. The one moment that is dramatically forceful is the encounter between the two travellers and the nearly blind man, here we get close to the mournful sense of loss and the certainty of death, here we see the iceberg tip of what is the profundity of the adults sense of time and the child's innocence.I realise a film is not a novel but even so one might look toward the ethos of the source work. I am sure that all who care about cinema will go and see this film, but be prepared to feel let down.

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2 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
Ending spoiled the film, 16 September 2009

Author: linguas1 from Canada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

A bleak and desolate but enthralling and believable rendition of survival within a society that has experienced almost total destruction after a nuclear war. The monochromatic scenes, grays and browns, the barren and desolate landscapes all add to the theme of pending horror. No kindness, no joy in this new world reality. Father and son take to the road in their struggle for survival and face sometimes terrifying brutality. The development of their relationship is heartwarming, with excellent performances by the two lead actors. The cameo performance by Robert Duval as a half blind survivor they meet on the road is a treat. I would have given this film an excellent rating, had belief not been suspended in the last few minutes by the less than credible, actually absurd, Hollywood sugarcoated happy ending.

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10 out of 97 people found the following comment useful :-
A film without a personal vision from a book with a strong one, 15 September 2009

Author: Francesco from Italy

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.

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