Road to Perdition (2002)

Damnation Alleyway. When his son witnesses him enacting a hit, mob enforcer Michael Sullivan finds that the man whom he likened to a father has ordered a hit on him and his family. Too late to save his wife and youngest child, Sullivan goes on the run with his eldest boy and plots revenge along the way. How refreshing to find a gangster movie in the modern age, more so, how refreshing to find a gangster movie set in the early 1930s and not involving foul mouthed Mafioso types. Directed by Sam Mendes and starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Daniel Craig and Jude Law, Road To Perdition is an adaptation of the Graphic Novel that was brought to us by Max Allan Collins & Richard Piers Rayner. The film deals with themes of violence and its consequences and fathers and sons, set to a watery back drop during the Great Depression. It's also a pulse pinging treat of visual magnificence thanks to cinematographer Conrad L. Hall (his last film before he passed away). Comparisons with great gangster film's of the past are inevitable, but Mendes' film has more in common with something like "Eastwood's Unforgiven" and "John Ford's The Searchers", the journey of the lead protagonist is fraught and telling, and motivated by circumstance. Yet the trick for first time viewers that Road To Perdition has up its sleeve, is that we don't know how it will work out for Hanks' Sullivan. It makes for a riveting experience with many transcendent rewards along the way. As regards the cast, Hanks is a touch miscast, but his play off relationship with the quite terrific Newman gives the film some solid ground from which to launch the sombre story. Daniel Craig does a nifty line in weasel and Law convinces as a mouldy toothed hired killer who enjoys taking photographs of his victims. Pic has almost philosophical mediations on good and bad, and it's elegiacally drawn by Mendes. The melancholic mood is enhanced by Thomas Newman's musical score, where he reworks his "Shawshank Redemption" score for narrative tightness. The film thrives as a poetic and atmospheric piece. The story might be basic, but it manages to rise above that because it be a superbly directed and well acted picture. One that just happens to be beautiful in spite of the bleakness that lingers on the main protagonist and the journey he undertakes. 8/10