64
Metascore
33 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75PremierePremiereThis might just be a tad too grueling and bleak for everyone’s liking, but it’s a Road that’s definitely well worth traveling.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliThe movie The Road is nowhere close to its literary sire, but it's probably the best one could hope for from a movie version.
- 75Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMiami HeraldRene RodriguezThe filmmakers capture enough of the book's essence -- and the power of its knockout, transcendent ending -- to more than justify the movie's existence.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterThe Hollywood ReporterDirector John Hillcoat has performed an admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale, even at the cost of sacrificing color, big scenes and standard Hollywood imagery of post-apocalyptic America.
- 67Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanThere's enough foreboding in America right now to make sitting through a movie such as The Road seem like one more heavy burden that, frankly, no one needs.
- 67The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasAas grim as The Road gets, Hillcoat goes a little soft at the wrong time. Someone like Michael Haneke would have no trouble embracing this material’s uncompromising dreariness.
- 63Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsThe best thing about the film is Viggo Mortensen’s performance. A stealth talent of many shadings, Mortensen has a way of fitting easily into nearly any period, any milieu.
- 63St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsSt. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsThe Road has the signposts of an important film, but it lacks the diversions of an inviting trip.
- 50New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinEvocative as it is, The Road comes up short, not because it’s bleak but because it’s monotonous.
- 40VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyExcept for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front.