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The Road (2009)

Director: John Hillcoat

Time Out rating

Average user rating

55 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

When Cormac McCarthy’s brutal saga of post-apocalyptic angst won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, a big screen adaptation became inevitable. Whether or not this was a good idea seemed irrelevant: it was a bestselling book with a timely, inherently cinematic theme; the movie had to be made.

‘The Proposition’ director John Hillcoat’s film is as direct and unflinching an adaptation as one could reasonably hope for. A man (Viggo Mortensen) and a boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) wander the American wasteland after an unnamed ecological disaster. The trees are bare, the animals dead, the few human survivors starving, desperate, often violent, occasionally monstrous.‘The Road’ is certainly the bleakest and potentially the least commercial product in recent Hollywood history. Both book and movie suffer from the same inherent weakness – they exist purely to make you miserable. Sure, there’s a smattering of subtext – a little eco-politics here, a spot of family psychology there – but the central purpose is to break your heart and shatter your soul.

On which level, Hillcoat’s movie is a resounding triumph. Stunning landscape photography sets the melancholy mood, and Nick Cave’s wrenching score reinforces it. But it is the performances that ultimately hold the film together. We expect this kind of selfless professionalism from Mortensen, and McPhee is appropriately sad-eyed as his long-suffering son, but it’s the incidental characters who steal the show, notably Robert Duvall in a startling cameo which not only distils the film’s key themes into a single three-minute scene, but singlehandedly lifts a potentially drab affair into something quietly impressive. Just don’t expect to walk out smiling.

Author: Tom Huddleston 2010-01-05 09:18:22

Time Out London Issue 2055: Jan 5-13, 2010

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User reviews of this film

vini said...

Posted on Feb 05 2010 12:57 Normally i dont comment on films online, however after wasting 8 pounds and two hours of my life yesterday, i thought that is only fair to warn to peolple not commit the same mistake, maybe if i had read the book i would have understood it better, but this film has got no beginning nor an ending and even though, i have to say, the actors performance are good, it is still not enough to make you enjoy the film and just not leave the cinema room after 30 mim. so if you want to watch fair enough, just dont waste your money, download it.

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Thomas Noctor said...

Posted on Feb 03 2010 17:19 I was really looking forward to this movie, but after seeing it I'm terribly disappointed. The movie never goes anywhere and is incredibly boring. Good actors and very good settings so I'll give it one star for that. But if there were cannibals around would you really walk on the open road? I think not, a sorry excuse for a film, could have and should have been better, as I wanted it to be. Good idea that never materialised into a good film. And to the reviewer that said the kid was whiney? How would you be in a world that was ending if you were a child? Very stupid comment! Poor movie, one of the Turkeys of the year!

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sylvia bicknell said...

Posted on Feb 01 2010 20:29 once again an amazing performance from viggo is there any character this man cant play i went every step of the road with them a truly memorable film with oscar winning performances

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Margot said...

Posted on Jan 31 2010 12:14 The best movie what I ever seen

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Mikey said...

Posted on Jan 30 2010 23:56 This was a dreary film with some poor acting. Plot isn't exactly challenging either.

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temi said...

Posted on Jan 29 2010 23:01 This was the most stunning, traumatic and heartbreaking movie i have ever seen

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Russell said...

Posted on Jan 27 2010 20:04 Get the obvious out of the way, the film is stunningly shot, not beautiful but stunning and the score is perfectly desolate. Viggo Mortenson plays the angsty,potentially paranoid, sisyphean human stripped bare as well as anyone could, he manages to convey the desperate haunting hope and the tragic knowing despair beautifully with nothing but crinkles and haunted eyes, The films strengths are however also it's weakness, its packed with analogy, from the constant banging open of locked doors with brute force and optimism, where to discover the charnal house at the centre of hell or an oasis of hope, there are the missing thumbs of a number of morally dubious fellow travellers, which I'm assuming is significant in that it is often seen to be evolutionary signifier, The blind old man with biblical intonations or even the beetle as bright winged hope at the bottom of pandora's box. There is repetition throughout the film which is clearly deliberate and even Viggo's final message is to do the same things.. but there is lack of willingness by the director to actually forge this into any cohesive thought, It's quite acceptable to leave us wondering whether hope is the only good thing left or whether it is the worst of all things but keeping the characters lurching forward into certain doom, it's acceptable that we are left to fear for the boy who has not learnt the lessons of his father, despite the fathers lessons earlier being shown as deeply flawed. What is less satisfying is that the film takes all the worries of modern society and makes the film suitable for a reading of any of them being a cause. It doesn't spoil the film it just stops it being great. I' is however deeply thought provoking, a difficult film and defiantly lacking in commerciality but well worth watching.

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philmk said...

Posted on Jan 27 2010 01:42 Grumpy man and whiny kid in pretentious post-apocalyptic zombie movie.

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ben graham said...

Posted on Jan 26 2010 00:05 What a pile of shit

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Evie said...

Posted on Jan 22 2010 21:53 I really dont get this kind of Apocolyptic Porn. All the performances were strong and the storyline has its chilling moments but i dont believe anyone who says they feel better leaving the cinema than when they went in after watching this. Too bleak

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Dmacka said...

Posted on Jan 22 2010 11:28 I agree with much of what everyone has said. Kylez - you're so right about the guy peeing against a tree. It's such a weird combo!Though I think maybe the mixture of civility and barbarism is central to what makes the cannibals so fucking freaky scary. They're like normal people... Whilst i did like the soundtrack, and i thought it was well placed as a warning - given the footage was so unflinching - i did at times find it intrusive like Constantine.
This film is immensely depressing and at times harrowing in a very gory way. that does not in ANY way come across in the trailer. I went to see this with a killer hangover and it almost gave me a heart attack. I was expecting a mixture of Deep Impact and Homeward Bound. What i got was a combination of Schindler's List and 28 days later.
I guess that's partly my fault for having not read the book. Which I'm not sure i could do now as this fucked with my head so much.
I think the worst bit is the woman who 'goes to get changed' in the cannibal house.
I don't think at any point was this dull though... and i think the fact that the cataclysm was unnamed (as it is apparently in the book also) makes the story more enthralling, as you stop focusing so much on the practical circumstances. Because of this i'd disagree with NIck, you can imagine things haven't been THIS bad for the entire aftermath, hence the mother's slow degradation and the boy's surprising lack of knowledge.

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Dmacka said...

Posted on Jan 22 2010 11:28 I agree with much of what everyone has said. Kylez - you're so right about the guy peeing against a tree. It's such a weird combo!Though I think maybe the mixture of civility and barbarism is central to what makes the cannibals so fucking freaky scary. They're like normal people... Whilst i did like the soundtrack, and i thought it was well placed as a warning - given the footage was so unflinching - i did at times find it intrusive like Constantine.
This film is immensely depressing and at times harrowing in a very gory way. that does not in ANY way come across in the trailer. I went to see this with a killer hangover and it almost gave me a heart attack. I was expecting a mixture of Deep Impact and Homeward Bound. What i got was a combination of Schindler's List and 28 days later.
I guess that's partly my fault for having not read the book. Which I'm not sure i could do now as this fucked with my head so much.
I think the worst bit is the woman who 'goes to get changed' in the cannibal house.
I don't think at any point was this dull though... and i think the fact that the cataclysm was unnamed (as it is apparently in the book also) makes the story more enthralling, as you stop focusing so much on the practical circumstances. Because of this i'd disagree with NIck, you can imagine things haven't been THIS bad for the entire aftermath, hence the mother's slow degradation and the boy's surprising lack of knowledge.

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Mike said...

Posted on Jan 21 2010 21:14 All those who gave this movie 4 or 5 stars I'm sure that if disaster does occur it will be easy to spot you since you will be the ones stamping on the floor in an attempt to find an underground store of food under every manhole cover.............. hoppy hunting, but all you will get down there is sh**** i'm afraid..... but then u got that watching this movie in the cinema

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Jan 21 2010 02:01 was the environmental disaster responsible for the speech disorder as the boy survivor keeps chanting papa and in a sinister accent too,and the road trek is just so monotonous with every event repeated 3 times at least ,while viggo keeps crying and trying to practice how he will kill themselves with a handgun if the cannibals catch them ,and that is when he is not taking nude swims on the road to hell ,
that was hilarious to see him bare -arsed naked while human predators roam in search of huma meat .
the boy cannot act for his life and it has no rhyme or reason as to why and where are they going to the coast across half of USA ,
The worst aspect is charlize theron in a schizoid role as the mother who suddenly disappears as she wants viggo to kill her and the boy -if you can believe that than you will endure the dreary narrative which is as slow as a walking stick and interrupted by tedious flashbacks of the marital life -
the ending was rather redeeming but illogical like the rest of the adaptation of the book ,and i will refrain from watching anymore post-apocalyptic movies as i much prefer mad max to these incompetent pretentious hyped bundles of serious boredom .

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Andy S said...

Posted on Jan 19 2010 13:59 Just stunning. A heartbreaking tale of the last threads of hope in mankind, played wonderfully by Viggo and McPhee....very true to the text and the ending was almost bleaker than in the book, in a strange way. The last paragraph of the novel is one the greatest ever written, and this film plays a great respect to it. Tense and ponderous, and Duvall is astounding in his cameo. Loved it.

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