Directed by Sam Mendes

Written by David Self

Starring
- Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan
- Paul Newman as John Rooney
- Daniel Craig as Conner Rooney
- Jude Law as Maguire
- Stanley Tucci as Frank Nitti
- Tyler Hoechlin as Michael Sullivan Jr.

It must be so hard to be a hot, young director. Hot as in every pinhead in Hollywood telling you that you are the next big thing. I imagine that would be a great deal of pressure. Most people would crack. Like M. Knight Shyamalan. Yeah, the Sixth Sense was pretty good. But have you ever seen Unbreakable? Shoot yourself in the eyes before you do. You'll enjoy it more.

Then there is David Fincher. He managed to hold it together for two great movies (Se7en and Fight Club) before dropping his pants and unloading Panic Room on us. It smelled. What did it smell like? Panic Room smelled of conceited cockiness; Fincher felt that he was so good at his craft that he didn't have to bother with little things like plot and character. He would just let his "mastery of the medium" and his "genius" speak for itself. All Panic Room said was "I smell."



That brings us to young (relatively speaking) Sam Mendes. American Beauty was an ass kicker of a movie. so much so that not only was it the only time that me and the Academy have agreed on what was actually the best picture of the year, but the film also managed to sap Kevin Spacey of all his talent. Point being, when your feature film debut takes home the biggest Oscar, generally speaking you only have one direction to travel.

Road To Perdition is the latest in a long line of big summer movies that I enjoyed right up until the halfway point. Then for some inexplicable reason, lame, sappy scene after lame, sappy scene keep appearing before my eyes and by the time the film is over I'm left wondering when technology will get to the point that us viewers will be able to edit our own custom version of a movie. Like The Bourne Indentity and Minority Report before it, Road To Perdition turns the lights off upstairs at the one hour point.

First though, let me comment on the good points, because there were many. Tom Hanks. He is just menacing in this movie. Not only that, but his character is understated, possibly even under-acted. Usually when you have a huge name in a film (like say Cruise) it is very difficult for even a moment to forget that you are watching a giant star. I remember saying to myself on more than one occasion, "Holy crap, that's Tom Hanks!" For a decade now, every time I have seen Hanks in anything I'm waiting for the donkey to do all the coke and OD. Throughout Road To Perdition, I firmly believed I was watching a story about Michael Sullivan, a sociopathic thug for the mob. One third of Hanks' scenes are shot from behind. Somebody figured out that since Hanks is sort of a big dude anyway, dressing him up in a wool blazer with a wool overcoat would make him look gigantic. Like my friend and personal trainer Johnny Lee says, "Big shoulders are what makes you look big." Indeed.

Road To Perdition has some of the most beautiful cinematography I have seen in years. Exquisite. Gorgeous. Spellbinding. Mendes is gifted. A real, actual talent. Of course that talent is hiring Conrad Hall (Cool Hand Luke and In Cold Blood as well as winning the Oscar for American Beauty) twice in a row. One scene that really stands out is when we are first introduced to Jude Law's character, Maguire. Law is a photographer who makes part of his living snapping shots of murder victims. In a scene directly stolen from Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead, an off camera voice is explaining that the hit-man they have in mind is particularly bloodthirsty and effective. Law has his camera ready to go when the subject of his photographs turns out to not quite be dead. So, Law finishes him off. Even though I would have had Law stick-shift the knife around the whack's chest, Mendes treats us to a real nice shot of the murderous Maguire giving it all for his work. Another scene I suppose I have to mention for its visual beauty is the big shoot out at the end. The intent was a little over the top, a touch too melodramatic, especially since we really didn't even know who was getting killed.. I get it, its "artsy." However, just as a piece of film, it looked really slick. Plus, the sound is incredible.



So where does Road To Perdition make a wrong turn? (I just couldn't resist!) I'm going to start at the beginning: David Self. Yep, I'm blaming the writer. Here's why. The motherfucker wrote The Haunting. If that is not a bad movie, I don't know what is. Oh wait, I do. Anyhow, the plot of Road To Perdition unraveled too quickly and there was almost no character development whatsoever. My first impressions of the characters stayed with me for the duration of the film. John Rooney (Paul Newman) is cruel but fair tyrant of a mob boss who will destroy everyone he cares about in order to protect his fatally flawed son (Another theme ripped off from Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead). Hanks is an unlovable brute of an everyman who will stop at nothing to avenge his wife and son's murder. Law's Maguire is a misanthropic, death-obsessed murder junky who only takes pleasure in death. I could go on, but you get the point. Self gives us a whole smorgasbord of one-dimensional characters that at first seem pretty OK, but they wane considerably in appeal as the movie plods along.

Still, a good story could have helped to overcome that little snafu. Unfortunately, at a crucial point just past the middle of the movie, everything gets fucked up.

Hanks gets shot. Just before he gets shot, Hanks' Sullivan character shoots Jude Law in the face. The two of them are up on the third floor of a hotel. Hanks runs downstairs and jumps onto a moving car. As the car is moving away from the hotel, Law shoots Hanks in the arm. With a handgun. With blood in his eyes. I am assuming that like me, all of you own your own sidearms. Or at least have shot one a couple of times. If you are twenty-five feet away form a stationary target, you have to be a pretty damn good shot to hit anything worthwhile. Law was about a hundred feet away, bleeding from the eye and going after a moving target. That's Lee Harvey Oswald type marksmanship. Besides being fanciful, that part is such a cliché. "Ow, I got shot in the arm." Give me a break. That piece of plot wasn't so bad, though. I could have accepted it.



What I can't except is the benevolent old farmer couple that Sullivan and Son visit next. Not only are the old "unwashed" man and women boring beyond the realm of comprehension, but wouldn't they have been the least bit curious as to why a man with a bullet in his arm had his twelve year old son drive him to a stranger's farm? They would at least want to know who shot him and if that guy might show up on their farm. But no... The man doesn't even speak and the woman does nothing but explain to Hanks how much Michael Sullivan Jr. loves his old man. Duh. Then the single most infuriating thing I've seen in many moons happens.

See, just before big Sullivan gets shot, him and the little one were robbing banks around the Midwest of "mob money". So when the two of them show up at the farm, they have a whole trunk full of cash. Which they LEAVE WITH THE OLD PEOPLE. Come on! Mendes must have been dusting off a spot for his next Oscar when this part slipped by him in dailies. Serioulsy, if you are on the run and you know that half of all organized crime is trying to kill you and your son, wouldn't you hang onto any money that you had? Not to take away from the fantasy world that the millionaires in Hollywood all live in, but money, not "doing the right thing," is how people survive in this world. It was just a really unnecessary and insulting part. Sort of like the end of Rat Race and the whole of Pay It Forward. A bunch of rich Hollywood millionaires telling me how I should give away my money. Where's my sidearm?

I could go on for days about how low the movie sank after that part. In the end, it was way below the waterline. All I kept thinking was, "Law will shoot Hanks in 10, 9, 8" The shitty part was, that up until the shootout/arm shot part happened, I was ready to unload all sorts of accolades onto this page. But then it went all soft in the head. Road To Perdition is not a bad movie. Some parts were really well done and there was a layer of humor that ran through the first hour fifteen which I found entertaining. In fact, if you can see it in a theater, do so. For nothing else than other to appreciate how beautiful nearly every scene is. Just don't be expecting American Beauty II. Unfortunately, I was.

Ruthless Ratings

• Overall: 6
• Direction: 6
• Acting: 7
• Story: 4
• DVD Extras: Thhpt!
• Re-watchability: 6

Special Ruthless Ratings

• Number of times you wondered how the word "Perdition" got into the title because not only did they change the name of Revenge of the Jedi to Retrun because the studio felt that "revenge" was too big a word for the general movie going public to swallow, but the otherwise forgettable umpteenth James Bond Installment License To Kill was originally titled License Revoked until it was discovered that 67% of the movie going public didn't know what the word "revoked" meant: 12
• Number of times you thought Jude Law still looked prettier than all the girls you know even though he was all scared up and bald: 3
• Number of times you thought that the movie would have been just as good if the kid wasn't in it: 7
• Number of times Tom Hanks impressed you: 23
• Number of times David Self depressed you: 32
• Number of times you wished men still wore hats and suits everyday while inside the theater: 9
• Number of times while outside in the warm California sun: -2

I didn't expect this to be a great film, like The Conversation or something. I just figured it would at least be good, like American Beauty, which Jonny over-estimates. Sure it's cool how Spacey blackmailed his boss, and I'm all for yuppie bashing, but those are not sufficient conditions for a great film. Jonny's right about this one though. You expect a good movie, you get 2/3 of decent movie.



Sam Medes takes us through a fairly cut and paste gangster story. There is some well written dialog, like when Paul Newman answers Tom Hanks' indignation by pointing out what we've been thinking all along: "there are only murderers in this room!" Another strong point is that, while the characters are static, they are not black and white. In most movies, Newman's character would have pretended to be a benevolent crime lord, and later been exposed as a being utterly ruthless and greedy. In this film, he is the relatively just man he claims to be. The only reason our sentiments are with Hanks is that the story is told from his perspective. But from a more objective standpoint, neither man is better or more in the right than the other.

The middle of the film is suspenseful and entertaining, as Hanks and son rob banks and deal with Jude Law's character. Why are they robbing banks? As nearly as I can tell, it's to piss off the Chicago mob enough to either kill or turn out Conner the family killer. And to round up some cash. By the way Jonny, are you sure they left all the cash with the old folks? I thought they just left a nice chunk. The cinematography is impressive, but let's give credit to the cinematographer, Conrad Hall.

The highlight of the film for me was when Hanks sets out to do something dangerous and tells his son, if he doesn't return "go to [Methodist] Reverend Sullivan. Do not go to [Catholic] Father Flannigan." A single lady in the theater totally cracked up, reading an unintending meaning that could fairly plausibly have been the real meaning, which made me laugh too once I caught on.

Even the good parts of the film contain warnings of what is to come: a gratuitous shot of a cute little girl dancing and another child repeats something he heard, not fully understanding it's meaning. Anytime a director goes for "awwww, so cute" my mood worsens.



The problems arise as we come to the final third of the movie. I didn't expect Mendes to make a great film, but he had other ideas. Every fucking scene is an attempt to equal the climax of Through a Glass Darkly by substituting gimmicks and a manipulative score for emotional power. A shootout between Hanks and a bunch of Newman's gangsters, for example, is totally ridiculous. Every aspect is clumsily contrived to a score that says, "Here is what you should think about during this scene. It is monumental!" The grandiloquence extends to the preposterous climax. The ocean goes "woooshhh, whoooshhh, whoosshhh." "Whoosshh," Hanks is in an immaculate room that is entirely white. Whhoooshhh. White! Symbolism! Whooosshhh. He's looking at his son play on the beach and is finally at peace. Whooossshhh. The camera angle is set up so you can see everything behind him. Whooosshhh. You realize that Jude Law is going to come from behind and kill him. Whooooshhh. Mendes waits about ten seconds with nothing happening, as if he wants every single person in the theater to know what is going to happen before it does. Whooshh. Bang. Blood on white. Whoosshh. Life fades away. Whoosh. Whoooshhh. Erich laughing. For God's sake, even in a Scorsese film, sometimes people just plain get shot.

After that I was more than ready for things to end. Hank's son goes back to the farm to live and Mendes almost seems to be taunting us with the way the dialog is delivered. You know the rest of one sentence after the first few words, but he drags it out for literally 10 or 15 seconds. "Most people think I grew up on a farm. And... ...In a way... ... ...I guess... ... ... ... I did." I finished the sentence in my mind twenty times before the boy did, fidgeting because I couldn't wait for the film to end.