The Road Review

I like a good doomsday flick and ever since the flying train wreck that was 2012, I've been hanging out for something to restore my faith in the genre. I could tell from the preview for The Road that it was going to be a film with substance and not just an excuse to have the CGI guys crash an aircraft carrier into the White House. But just how good is it? Read on and find out just how badly humanity screws itself over this time.

The Road is based on the 2006 book of the same name that won Corman McCarthy the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Does that name ring a bell? No? Well it should. McCarthy wrote the bleak yet brilliant (but mostly bleak) No Country For Old Men.

It's been roughly a decade since the apocalypse^{+Insert your favourite doomsday scenario here.} laid waste to the planet and civilisation along with it. Grey clouds obscure the sun and plants no longer grow. The world is cold and getting colder. There are no more animals and barely any people. Life on Earth has all but faded out completely. The few humans that are left scrape together an existence by picking the bones of civilisation, but there is virtually nothing left. Most have resorted to cannibalism since no other form of sustenance remains. There is no society, only nomads and small tribes. It's a "survival of the less malnourished" struggle where the lucky ones avoid being eaten long enough to die of starvation. Oh, and there is no internet whatsoever! Welcome to the end of the world. Enjoy your stay.
The Road tells the story of a father who is trying to keep his boy alive as they travel through this harsh environment and that's really all I can say. The rest is in the watching.
"Post aprophylactic? So it's like I Am Legend, yeah?" No. Shut up. I Am Legend is to The Road what Hancock is to Batman Begins.^{+or any movie that doesn't shit itself halfway through.}

"I beg you pardon, sir. We are NOT a 'rape gang'. We're a 'kill gang'. We would never torture someone with rape before killing them."
"Oh, good. So you're not going to rape us."
"Now, I never said that."

The father is played by Viggo Mortenson who gives a brilliant performance. I liked Viggo in The Lord of The Rings (1,2 & 3), but he didn't grab my attention until I saw A History of Violence. In The Road, he is well suited to the role of the father and a pleasure to watch. He reportedly lost 13kg in order to appear as gaunt a wasteland survivor should. In the two instances we are treated to Viggo's bare ass, he looks thin beyond health, although not to the degree that Christian Bale does in The Machinest. (If you haven't seen it, add it to your list.)
Trivia: Up until I wrote the above paragraph, I thought his name was Viggo Morgenson. Shirley, I can't be the only one to make that mistake.

Charlize Theron plays the absent mother who we see in flashbacks. In these scenes we see the father and mother just after the clock strikes doomsday and they are the most emotionally charged of the entire film. Unless you're a robot^{+Not that there's anything wrong with that.} , be prepared to have your heart stings plucked and your tears jerked. The mother does come off a little creepy though. I don't think this is intentional because I find Charlize to be just a little "off" in general. If a friend were to say to me: "Oh my God! You'll never guess which famous actress was just found to have a body in her freezer." I would say: "Charlize Theron. I told you that bitch was batshit!"

The son is played by Kodi Smit-McPhee who you may remember from Romulus, My Father. I've read that Kodi trumped the other auditionees by having the forethought to look very much like Charlize Theron who had already been cast as the mother. And does he ever. Still, I think perhaps his landing the role might have had something to do with his acting. "Hey! This guy has blue eyes and the guy in our story has blue eyes. Fire Brad Pitt and get this guy a script!"

Other mentionable cast members are Robert Duvall as Anthony Hopkins and Guy Pearce as Hobo Brad Pitt. (Not to be confused with Boho Brad Pitt.)

The Road would have to be my favourite rendition of a post apocalyptic world yet. Dead trees stand decomposing on the hillsides. Cars and personal belongings lay abandoned in the streets and everywhere you look there is dirt and decay. The make up and costumes leave flattery at the door and depict just how filthy and dishevelled one would become trying to survive this harsh landscape. These are some freaky looking folk.

"On second thought, I think I do have some change on me after all"

This film reminded me a great deal of Fallout 3. The dead landscape, scavenging, raiders, cannibalism and charred skeletons are all here. If you took Fallout 3 and removed the retro-futurism and the humour, you would have The Road. I loved this realistic take on post apocalyptic earth, although it would have been nice if it wasn't so bleak. In Fallout 3^{+I love Fallout 3 and I've put in over 150 hour on it. So, yeah, I'm going to make comparisons.} , humanity had been knocked out, but you could see it was starting to regain consciousness. In The Road, it's been shot in the stomach and is bleeding out in the filthy stall of an abandoned rest stop. This is not a story of life after the apocalypse. This is the story of mankind's last breath.

Not to say anything of their actual fate, I got the strong feeling from the outset that the father and son were doomed. I mean, what good could possibly happen in a world as hopeless as the father describes? So I wrote them off from the very beginning and told myself not to get attached, but I just couldn't help feeling for them. I was nearly in tears when the father stood on the bridge with the mother's photograph.^{+brb, hugging wife} I haven't been this depressed by a movie since Chrilden of Men.^{+The movie where they couldn't form babby.} These two films are quite similar and if you like one, chances are you'll like the other. Just don't watch them both in the same sitting or you'll most likely commit suicide, but for completely different reasons than if you were to watch Crossroads and Glitter back to back.



The fact that the plot is straight forward keeps the focus on their plight of the father and son. It's very simple: These two vagabonds are trying desperately to survive an unsurvivable environment. There are no distractions like multiple plot threads, what the villain is up to or how things will tie together in the end. There really isn't much going on. A movie with weaker characters couldn't pull this off, but the writing is strong here and it works well.

The Road is depressing from start to finish. Some people may not appreciate that (see: women), but that's what makes this movie what it is. It's beautifully shot and well told. I know a lot of people won't love it, but I highly recommend this film.

I'm giving The Road four spit-roasted babies out of five.