On The Road again

High expectations were the name of the game coming into The Road (2009). It is a film that is based on a Cormic McCarthy, and it is coming off the heals of the great No Country For Old Men. Every still I had seen from this film and the trailer looked amazing, I thought it was going to be a sure fire Academy Award best picture nominee. It still may touch Academy voters, and we may be seeing this film come Oscar time, but to me it fell far from my expectations.

It started out well, showing us a world so desolate that you don't blame a Father for showing his kid how to commit suicide if he decides that is what he wants. With most Apocalypse movies there is some sense of hope that everything will turn around, that there is some sort of savior or safe zone where people have figured it out, you never got that sense in The Road, and I thought that was a nice touch. The problem then becomes, what is the point? Why are we watching these characters? The Road tries to solve this dilemma by proposing the question of what makes us moral when there is no society. I loved the concept, but for some reason just couldn't be executed in the film because it became too black and white (I tend to think that it is done real well in the book). Kodi-Smit McPhee plays Vigo Mortensens son, and he is constantly asking if he and his father are the good guys and who are the bad guys. It may have simply come down to his almost nagging tone that made this morality tale too simple, but it really got on my nerves and I had wished they tried to give some more depth to it.

So a lot of the faults could have come down to bad child acting. Mcphee wasn't horrible but he wasn't good enough to work, and I could see the veteran Mortensen struggling to act across from him. The combination of the incessant questioning of the good guys and bad guys, along with the lack of structure as to where the film was going, had me laughing at points towards the end, and there is no reason for anyone to laugh during this movie. And don't get me started on the final 400 Blows freeze frame shot at the end. It was stuck in there for no reason other to reference the famous film, it wasn't even conveying the same message.

The cinematography and set design were stunning and perfectly captured this realistic post-apocalyptic world. There was one scene in particular that was so suspenseful and scary I almost yelled in the theatre (would have been embarrassing). Viggo Mortensen seemed to do more for the preparation of this role than he did during the shoot. He looked the part, he was haunting, but his acting fell short of his aesthetic. Two good supporting performance came from Michael K Williams as the thief, and the great Robert Duvall as the old man. I think part of the fault has to go to the director John Hillcoat for not being able to make all these elements work together.

Unfortunately I think this film will receive a lot of acclaim solely because the movie screams to be recognized as a great peace of art. Looking beyond its pedigree The Road is a flawed film that can't rise to meet it's own ambitions.

**1/2