|
ROAD TO PERDITION Send This Review to a Friend
Gangster films come and go. What distinguishes "Road to Perdition" is the emotional involvement it generates. The film is beautifully stylized, which makes it somewhat distant visually, but there is emotional intensity that compels one to care about key characters, all the more surprising because the story moves in the lethal milieu of mobsters and hit men. This latest work by director Sam Mendes is absorbing from start to finish, and much credit for that goes to Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and young actor Tyler Hoechlin.
Perdition is the name of an imaginary town in Illinois, and, of course, also signifies hell, of which there is plenty in this story set in the 1931 depression year when prohibition was still in force and a gold mine for gangsters such as Al Capone. Hanks, in a role very different from anything he has played before, excels as Michael Sullivan, a methodical hit man who has been taken in and raised as a son by mobster John Rooney, stoically and sensitively portrayed by Paul Newman. Sullivan is admired by his 12-year-old son Michael, Jr., who doesn't know what has dad does for a living and why he is often away from his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and younger son Peter. Rooney also has a son of his own, the scheming mobster Connor (Daniel Craig), and despite his untrustworthiness and hot-headedness, Rooney loves him as protectively as Sullivan loves his sons.
The drama, expertly scripted by David Self from the graphic novel by written by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner, plunges forward when young Michael hides in his dad's car one night, which leads to his witnessing a cold-blooded killing touched off by Connor and in which Michael's father participates. The Sullivan family is suddenly in danger when it is learned that Michael knows what happened. Connor has his own evil agenda, and when he murders Sullivan's wife and young Peter, the elder Sullivan must exact revenge and he and Michael wind up on the run and with a deadly mission as personal loyalties become jumbled. Jude Law plays a press photographer specializing in photographing dead bodies and selling the pictures to the tabloids. He also moonlights as a hit man. His new assignment: kill Sullivan. Stanley Tucci is in good form handling the pivotal role of a Capone crony.
In a way "Road to Perdition" resembles a classic western in which the protagonist seeks vengeance and must kill anyone blocking his path. Conrad L. Hall's stylized photography adds to this aura. Sullivan gets a brazen idea of a ploy that he thinks will convince the mobsters in power to let him assassinate Connor. He and his son, on the lamb, take to robbing banks of Capone's money as a method of blackmail. Instead of "Bonnie and Clyde" it's daddy and kid as pop does the robbing and Michael, Jr., learns to drive the getaway car. But Sullivan's ultimate aim is also to see that his son doesn't follow in his footsteps as a criminal.
The consistently terrific acting, the mesmerizing look of the film and the buildup of suspense help make "Road to Perdition" a dramatic triumph. There is considerable violence, but none meant to be a turn-on, and there is an air of regret permeating the march to the inevitable, a quality to which both Hanks and Newman contribute considerably in their well-drawn portraits of men on a collision course because of their loyalties and what they do. A DreamWorks Pictures release.
|