Great Film!
9/10
Author: gottogorunning from United States
9 August 2005
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Frankly, this movie has gone over the heads of most of its detractors.
The opposite of perdition (being lost) is salvation (being saved) and this movie is one of a very few to deal with those two concepts. The movie also explores the love and disappoint- ments that attend the father-son relationship. It should be noted at the outset that none of these are currently fashionable themes.
The premise is that the fathers in the move, hit-man Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) and his crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), love their sons and will do anything to protect them. But Rooney's son Connor is even more evil than the rest. He kills one of Rooney's loyal soldiers to cover up his own stealing from his father. When Connor learns that Sullivan's son Michael witnessed it, he mistakenly kills Sullivan's other son (and Sullivan's wife) in an attempt to silence witnesses.
Sullivan decides he wants revenge at any price, even at the terribly high price of perdition. Rooney, who in one scene curses the day Connor was born, refuses to give up his son Connor to Sullivan, and hires a contract killer named Maguire (Jude Law) to kill Sullivan and his son. So Rooney joins his son Connor on the Road to Perdition. For the rest of the movie, accompanied by his surviving son young Michael, Sullivan pursues Connor Rooney down the Road to Perdition, and Maguire pursues Sullivan.
When Sullivan confronts Rooney in a Church basement, and demands that he give up Connor because Connor murdered his family, Rooney says - "Michael, there are only murderers in this room,.., and there's only one guarantee, none of us will see Heaven." As the movie ends, somewhat predictably, one character is saved and one character repents.
I'm not a big Tom Hanks fan, but he does step out of character to play hit-man Sullivan convincingly, giving a subtle and laconic performance. Newman does well as the old Irish gangster Rooney, showing a hard edge in his face and manner, his eyes haunted by Connor's misdeeds. Jude Law plays Maguire in a suitably creepy way. Tyler Hoechlin plays Young Michael naturally and without affectation.
The cinematography constantly played light off from darkness, echoing the themes of salvation and perdition. The camera drew from a palette of greens and greys. The greys belonged to the fathers and the urban landscapes of Depression era Illinois. The greens belonged to the younger sons and that State's rural flatlands. Thomas Newman's lush, sonorous and haunting music had faint Irish overtones and was played out in Copland-like arrangements.
The sets were authentic mid-Western urban - factories, churches. The homes shone with gleaming woodwork. The excellence of the movie lies in its generation of a unique feeling out of its profound themes, distinctive acting, and enveloping music and cinematography. The only negative was a slight anti-gun message slipped into the screenplay y, the movie's only nod to political correctness. I give this movie a10 out of 10; in time it will be acknowledged as a great film.
