Who am I, an amateur moviegoer, to say that two pros, Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli, are wrong? But amateur means lover--one who does something for love, not for money. I love really good movies, and I think that these usually on-target reviewers are wrong in calling Road to Perdition a three-star film. Titanic was, maybe a three-star film (or, on rethinking it, two-and-a-half). Road to Perdition is not only a four-star film, it is the best one I've seen since American Beauty, which, not coincidentally, had the same director. Look at it any way you want, from technical details to cinematography to acting to a story that plums the human dilemma, this a remarkable movie.
Road to Perdition is a movie about fathers and sons, a topic of eternal and profound importance, whether we're talking about every male's individual story, why ghettoes have endemic problems or why whole nations go to war. Road to Perdition addresses painful questions such as which counts more in a father's heart, blood or loyalty? Or in a son's heart, a father's decency or his simply being a father? It answers these questions with subtle but powerful truth, beautifully unfolded, as befits three wonderful actors, two Oscar-winners (Tom Hanks and Paul Newman) and one who will be (the boy to watch is Tyler Hoechlin).
Besides profound, timeless story and brilliant acting, it is a perfect period piece; the factories, homes, roads, signs, clothes, accoutrements are perfect period pieces. They could have been full of anachronisms and I would still have been deeply moved by the story, but the people who did these things got it right, down to the sweat stains on Hanks' collar and the protagonist's bicycle. So did the director and cinematographer; the film has a mood that derives from the darkness and heavy rain outside (reminiscent of Kurasawa's unrelenting rains)and the dark interiors that were once our home and workplace environments.
I found yet another thing fascinating. Gangsters, from the 20s onward, whether Italian, Jewish, Irish or Russian, are always depicted as crude and inarticulate. In this film, the Irish mafiosi and Frank Nitti are depicted as far more sophisticated and intelligent than those we see in the canonical fims and television series such as the Godfather, the Sopranos, Ghost Dog, the TV Untouchables, etc. Were they Tony Sopranos or more like the criminals who ran Enron, Arthur Anderson and WorldCom? I don't know, but now I'd like to.
Every movie has to have some errors of continuity, and found a few concerning the season. The story occurs in late-winter, but at times in-between, the trees are leafed out in late-Spring or even summer glory. Similarly, the fields are winter-sere in some scenes but the corn is growing to near summer height in others and plants are flowering. Clearly the scenes that made the final cut were not filmed in order, or in the six weeks that the story covered.
I don't want to tell the story here; an appropriate rendering (without revealing too much) appears in Steven Holden's NY Times review, which is much more more insightful than Ebert's or Berardinelli's. But I will venture a guess: Road to Perdition will be a strong contender at Oscar time if the Academy has any integrity left in it.
The brilliant science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon said "90% of everything is crap." That is certainly true of movies. But Road to Perdition is a movie that deeply touches the heart and mind. If you don't see any other film this year, see this one. Then, after you've thougth about it, see it again.
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