Directed by:
Sam MendesScreenplay:
David SelfCinematography:
Conrad L. HallComposer:
Thomas NewmanCast:
Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Daniel Craig, Stanley Tucci, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Liam Aiken, Dylan Baker, Ciarán Hinds, David Darlow (more)VOD (5)
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Gangster drama set in the American Midwest during the 1930s. Twelve-year-old Michael Sullivan Jr. is curious about what his father (Tom Hanks) does for a living, and one night decides to hide in his car as he goes off to work. It soon transpires that the elder Sullivan is a hitman for the mob, and when young Michael witnesses a killing carried out by the gangster boss' son Connor (Daniel Craig), it starts off a chain of events which will mark Michael's life forever. (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (15)
This film is packed with big names, from the excellent Tom Hanks to Daniel Craig, and the result is a decent retro gangster flick that has a great and quite dense atmosphere in places. What holds me back a bit from a four-star rating, though, is that there is relatively little action for those two hours, the finale is not very intense, and most of the film is a drama that tends to just lean on the gangster genre and actually focuses more on talking. Still, it doesn't change the fact that Sam Mendes and his signature are evident, the filmmaking quality is not lacking and overall the film is very ambitious for its time, it's not unnecessarily demanding and it's "viewer friendly", but I was expecting something a little different.
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The best film Sam Mendes ever made and the absolute best in the gangster genre. The atypical casting of Tom Hanks as a dark hero is an ideal counterpart to Paul Newman's tragic boss, and his journey, fearlessly mowing down enemies led by the perfectly slimy Jude Law, is also captured with amazing cinematography (see the unforgettable arrival in Chicago) and supported by impressive music. An underrated film.
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Thanks to Mendes, this atmospheric gangster movie is quite untraditional (for the genre, not for Sam) in terms of visuals and is more colorful than usual. Sort of unusually “beautiful", but still dark. Excellent acting and that revolting creature Jude Law got that trick with the coin down to a T. Road to Perdition has several extraordinary scenes, but Thompson in the rain is enough to give you a heart attack.
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Consumed with sentiment, pathos, and seriousness until my monitor cracked. Mendes is still the devil, yes. Scenes like the final showdown are absolutely fabulous. I didn't mind the Hanks stuff either. However, overall, I don't like the combination of a gangster movie with a tragic drama about discovering a relationship with your son. As long as it stays within the confines of a mafia movie, it's a fantasy. However, once the film moves into the "I had a nightmare" "Do you want to talk about it?" stages, it's bad. Because that sentiment is a little bit tacky in this movie.
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Road to Perdition is a very nice film with excellent acting and cinematography. But that’s where the praise ends. In order for it to be a gangster flick on the level of Coppola’s The Godfather, it would have had to focus more attention on the relationship between Paul Newman and Tom Hanks. And no humor should have intruded on the gloomy atmosphere. As it is, it’s more like Eastwood’s A Perfect World, scented with the perfume of American Beauty and ending with an overwrought climax. And the formulaic nature of the plot doesn’t do it any favours either. The phrase “he was my father” was on the tip of my tongue before young Sullivan even said it.
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