“The Road”

Reviewed 19 November 2009 by Ted Faraone

No stars on a scale of 0 to 5.  $0 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.

WRONG FILM, WRONG TIME

Whatever genius conceived the idea of making a movie from Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, “The Road,” ought to consider another line of work – like mortuary science.  It would be more uplifting.

The eponymous film, budgeted at an estimated $20 million, and packed with some high powered talent, including Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, and Robert Duvall, is a lugubrious, two-hour slog through cinematic squalor.  Not that squalor is necessarily a bad thing on the screen; Fernando Meirelles proved otherwise with “Blindness.”  It’s what one does with it that counts.  This effort and the timing of its release with unemployment in America above 10 percent makes one question the Weinstein brothers’ judgment.  People have enough problems in real life without plunging headlong into helmer John Hillcoat’s nightmare.

Set in a gray, increasingly cold, lifeless world where all animal and plant life are dead, a father and son (Mortensen and Kody Smit-McPhee) set out from their rustic home for the Atlantic coast following the suicide of the boy’s mother (Theron).  Why the coast is their destination is never explained.  Their journey is punctuated by earthquakes, forest fires, marauding gangs, and encounters with cannibals, lots of cannibals.  With food in short supply, many of the planet’s few remaining humans have taken to eating each other-- unless they chose suicide.  It’s one grisly scene after another with zero comic relief.

Gray predominates.  Color is largely washed out.  Set decoration consists of abandoned buildings, burned out cars, dead trees, and garbage.  Every sound poses a threat.  Their lifeline is a revolver with two shells.  Once in a while the pair get lucky and find a store of tinned food.  Sometimes they get robbed.

Ultimately the pair reach the coast, only for dad to die, presumably of tuberculosis (in one scene he spits blood).  Such backstory as exists is told in flashbacks, mostly Mortensen’s dreams, which are in full color.  The apocalypse is never explained.  The boy, born post-apocalypse, provides dad with a sort of moral compass, but given his circumstances, his humanity is difficult to understand. 

Tech credits other than cinematography are spotty.  Some critical lines of dialogue are inaudible.  Pic is not yet rated.  Your critic would rate it “AC” for “Avoid at all cost.”

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