Road
to Perdition Lights the WayRoad
to Perdition Lights the WayI'm going to do something I rarely do in this column. I am going to proclaim my love for a man.
OK, someone get my mother her smelling salts.
No, not THAT kind of love. I am talking about a love of craft, of accomplishment, of one man's largely unsung contribution to cinema--the medium I hold most dear. In reviews of Road to Perdition this week, you are going to read a lot about the acting of Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, the directing of Sam Mendes, and the screenwriting of David Self. All are top-notch. But they are not the main reason to see this movie.
Go see Road to Perdition for Conrad Hall. He is the Oscar-winning cinematographer who has given moviegoers for decades some of the most striking images ever captured on screen. He is the guy who shot Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, and The Day of the Locust. More recently, he was the man through whose camera we watched American Beauty and joined in Searching for Bobby Fischer. I love this man. I love what he does with light. I love what he does with darkness. And, yes, I love what he does with smoke and mirrors.
The vision of 1931 he, director Mendes, and production designer Dennis Gassner create in Road to Perdition will probably never leave me. There is not one second of this film that you do NOT believe it is '31. It's more than just the costumes and the hairstyles. It's the vastness of America of 70 years ago that they capture. The vastness of the unspoiled land, the vastness of the future that lies ahead for the country, the chasm between the nation's small towns and it's biggest cities, its powerful and its powerless.
Yes, this is a story about gangsters, but it is more than that. It's the story of fathers and sons, how the bond between the two can save them from the world while damning them to Hell. You ask any father, "Would you kill to keep your son safe?" And the answer to that question, 99.9 percent of the time would be a resounding "Yes!" This is the dilemma in Road to Perdition. Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan, a hitman in the employment of Irish mobster John Rooney (Newman). Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) is the son who knows nothing of his father's work. His mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) will only tell him it is what puts food on their table.
One night, though, the increasingly curious Michael Jr. hides in the backseat of dad's car as he drives to a job. The boy witnesses three murders, triggered by Rooney's sociopathic son, Connor (Daniel Craig). He is discovered, and Michael Sr. vows that he can make the boy live with their secret. Connor, though leaves nothing to chance and kills Michael's wife and younger son, putting into motion a series of bloody events that forces the two Michaels to go on the run. Eventually, a ruthless and rather soulless henchman named Maguire (Jude Law, in an astonishing, largely physical performance free of vanity) is assigned to hunt the elder Michael down and kill him before he can do any harm to the Rooney family. Matters are further complicated by the love and respect Michael Sr. has for John Rooney, an elderly man who took him in as a child and treated him like a son. John, though, must protect Connor as Michael must protect his own son.
Road to Perdition is a movie that I love right here and now, but it might be a movie I come to adore and cherish in the months and years to come. I will never get tired of looking at this movie. Every single shot was so meticulously thought-out by Mendes and Hall, that I just got lost in their visual poetry.
Those who doubt Hanks could pull off such a dark and violent character as Michael Sullivan need to see this movie. He plays Sullivan as a simple man who is very smart in the world he lives in. But he knows his son has a real chance of taking a different road, and he wants desperately to keep that chance alive. Unlike Rooney with Connor, Michael does not want Michael Jr. to follow in his footsteps.
What will I remember from this film? Images first and foremost. The diner in the middle of nowhere. The Sullivans' slow-motion drive into Chicago. Six weeks of winter bleeding into spring. But most vividly, waves crashing to the shore at the end of Perdition's road.
These images would be nothing without a compelling story, and Road to Perdition has one. At the center are Michael Sullivan and John Rooney, two violent and vicious men. Embodied by Hanks and Newman, though, we also glimpse their humanity. I have no idea what goes through such men's minds when they go to church (as the characters do quite often in Road to Perdition). I don't know how they pray to their Lord after doing the things they do. But I've always been fascinated by the fact that religion and honor and family meant more to these hoodlums of yesteryear than they do to so many clean-living people today.
Could Road to Perdition have benefited from a tighter pace? You bet. The film plays a little bit too much like a meditation in some spots. But this is really a movie-nerd nitpick on my part. And as a movie nerd, I will be seeing this one again real soon. My repeat viewings will be spent admiring Hall's visuals and use of light, Mendes' expert control of story and character, and Gassner's stunning sets and period detail (keep in mind, while watching, that almost NONE of the snow in the film is real!).
This is a must-see on the big screen.
Road to Perdition is rated R for bloody gun violence and language.
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