Movie: Road to Perdition
Genre: Family Drama
MPAA: Rated R for Language and Violence
DVD Release Date: 2/25/2003
Reviewed by: Geetarman Trung

The Story

It is a story purely about Fathers and sons, and it takes place during the depression-era. A top Irish Mafia boss named John Rooney (Paul Newman) is a surrogate who lovingly fathered Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) since childhood. Michael becomes a quiet hitman who raises a family with two boys.

Other than Michael, the boss has a real son named Connor Rooney who is a bad troublemaker, also a hitman, and he’s jealous of his dad’s close father-like bond to Michael. That spells drama, doesn’t it?

As a result, Connor kills Michael’s wife and younger son (this isn’t a spoiler, trust me!), and Michael and his older son goes on the run on the road to a lakeside town called Perdition, where Aunt Sarah lives. At the same time, Michael plots revenge by killing Connor. Although the Boss loves Michael like a son, he ordered him to be killed in order to protect his real son.

Throughout the course of the dilemma, Michael and his son Michael Jr. develops a strong father-and-son bond. The problem here is that Michael doesn’t want his son to be like him. But how can he avoid that in this entire messy situation where he has to give his son a gun to protect themselves?

The Critique

This is one of the best family dramas I’ve ever seen, with superb and effective story telling; the story gets a bit twisty, although the ending is sort of expected. It has the similar traits to “American Beauty”, also by the same director. That film is also about family drama with a great twisty story.

What really captured my affection for “Road to Perdition” is the awesome cinematography, the way the scenes were shot. It’s so good that it almost takes away the story itself! The picture in every second of the movie is worthy to be framed as a masterpiece; it’s a rolling artwork. It’s one the most beautifully crafted films I’ve ever seen, even though the movie is very dark and cold, with an effective use of rain, snow, and dark eerie nightfall. The director uses just barely enough light to draw out figures and objects, and he also uses warmth the brightness at a few scenes to illustrate love and emotion of father-and-son relationships.

There is one minor problem. Since the director focuses on a lot of the awesome cine-photography, he doesn’t spend more time on the dialog of the story, and with very few talking in this movie, it makes this two-hour movie a bit slow like a 2 and a half hour movie. But otherwise, Geetarman give it an A.