ENG: The Road
Skrivet av Petter Lassi
FilmrecensionFilm: The Road
Skådespelare: Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron och Robert Duvall
Regissör: John Hillcoat
Release: 2010-01-22
Betyg: 
”We’re the good guys, right papa? We’re still carrying the flame”
The end of the world, the end of humanity. Post-apocalyptic themed games, novels and movies have always been a personal favourite genre for me. Started off with the Fallout games, and George. A Romeros zombie flicks. It has always been pure entertainment to me.
I read the book The Road by Cormac McCarthy some months ago and I loved every single thing about it. I read the entire book in one session. It included everything I find exciting, a dying world, mankind on the edge of exctinct ion, and the relationship and long struggle for survival of a man and his son.
My expectiations, as you might imagined where through the roof, but was the movie any good?
Well, I’m speechless, dear lord. Don’t bring your date to go and watch this movie unless you want to finish the night crying yourself to sleep.
Gloom and doom
This movie shows that the end of the world is everything but graceful, a walk in the park or something pleasant whatsoever. Many of you might think that the end of the world don’t sound that bad. ”Hey, we can cluster up in a gigantic shopping mall and have the best time of our life” and to be honest, I had the same thoughts a long time. The end of the world always was something fictional for me. But after watching this movie you realize that this is something that does not compute as purely fictional anymore.
Planet Earth is struck by various of different natural disasters leaving the world in flames and torn up. You follow a man and his son left in the dying world, struggling for survival. A world that is now occupied by scavengers and cannibals. They must find shelter, constantly keeping an eye out for these wasteland cannibals. They have one goal, to head down south, where they hope to find some sort of way out from the scorched earth, but the road is long.
Credible relationship
The personal relationship between the man (Viggo Mortensen) and the boy (Kodi Smith-McPhee) is something unlike I’ve seen in a sci-fi movie before. It’s so well played that you can feel the agony they are going through and John Hillcoat really managed to capture the emotional father-and-son atmosphere, just like in the book.
As the man and his son is wandering through out the American rubbled landscape they meet people that lost their morality a long time ago, feeding on other survivors, and everytime the boy needs to confront and ask his father to confirm that they still are the good guys. It’s heartbreaking to watch the father and the son slowly loose their hope for survival and the withering father struggling to keep the flame of hope burning for both of them.
Robert Duvall (The Godfather as Tom Hagen) makes an outstanding appearance as an old dying man that the couple meets along the road, the scene turns out to be one of the most remarkable one in the movie.
Great editing and screenplay adaptation
I don’t want to spoil much for those yet to see it, by giving away to many events. But every one of them has a big impact on how the story evolves throughout the movie, the editing has really hit home. The screenplay by Joe Penhall is phenomenal along with the soundtrack made by Nick Cave and it’s captivating to watch this man and his son go through this emotional, rough and depressing but at the same time beautiful masterpiece.
The Road is one of the very few movies that left me stunned for minutes after the movie ended, the credits faded out and I still sat there contemplating what I just saw. It is indeed a sad story, and it gets you right in the heart.
Modern culture classic
It’s heartbreaking but at the same time it’s wonderful. I respect directors and writers that can write a story with such strong emotional bonds between the characters and the viewer, it’s one of those movies that you don’t want to end. And it will leave a scar in me for a very long time.
I recommend this movie and of course the novel, it’s a modern culture classic and in my opinion the movie is as well. Cormac McCarthy is a genius, a mastermind with a touch for writing a really touching father and son story.
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