HOLLYWOOD POV: "The Road"

Bleak, depressing, and both utterly captivating and repellant at the same time, THE ROAD, is not a film to be taken lightly. This post-apocalyptic thriller road trip/love story will pull you right in and keep your eyes brimming with tears as you watch two actors at the top of their game try to keep the good in human civilization alive against enormous odds.

Viggo Mortensen gives the performance of a lifetime that is the first most obvious and most definite Oscar nomination of the year. If he doesn’t get the nom I will eat my hat and post it on youtube for you all to enjoy. His son, played by 11-year-old Australian Kodi Smit-McPhee is equally as good.

Based on Cormac McCarthy's best-selling and Pulitzer Prize winning novel, THE ROAD is the heartbreaking and epic post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by an unnamed father and his young son across a totally barren landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that has destroyed civilization and most life on earth.  Basically, it’s the end of the world as we know it… and no one feels fine.

Using short restrained flashbacks we learn that ten years from now this unnamed cataclysmic environmental, or perhaps nuclear, event has killed off all animal and plant life. A constantly dreary gray sky leaks dirty water and dead trees fall without warning; the sky is gray with ash and soot from forests alive with only fire; falling snow is gray, water is brown; earthly color is just a memory. Cities are abandoned blasted wrecks, buildings lean and fall, and the streets are littered with the dead. A grim and all-too- convincing picture of human detritus barely surviving in clothing scavenged from the dead using layered black plastic bags for insulation in their shoes and clothes.

Sincethere is now no food or clean water humans have mostly died off, due to their own hand or others needs. The few that remain are struggling to find old cans of food and clean water…or other humans to eat.

The flashbacks tell us why the father and his young son have left their home and are on the road. They are heading south through a burned out America to find other humans on the coast in the South and to escape the increasingly cold and endless winter. Their entire journey is a struggle to survive in a world no longer capable of sustaining life… or their humanity. The father’s son is his humanity and his most treasured possession; their love for each other and their will to survive is what makes watching THE ROAD bearable.

On their journey through a dead and dying America they encounter roaming bands of outlaws, some looking for human slaves to capture and keep locked in a basement as a food source; they cut off fresh pieces of humans to eat and leave the rest alive in the basement to suffer. Others are barely surviving and barely retaining their humanity.

The father and his son wheel a shopping cart filled their meager belongings and when that is broken by the cannibals they gamely stagger on.  The father has a gun with only two bullets, meant for the moment when they might be discovered by the roaming cannibal gangs, one bullet for each of them to end their suffering. They are the good guys, as the father keeps telling his boy, they are the ones with the fire inside…the fire of humanity and goodness…things in short supply in this dead gray world.

Eventually they come across an underground bomb shelter filled with cans of food and water and for the first time in memory they eat their fill. But the father is too paranoid and he thinks he hears a dog scratching above them and fears someone is following them. He forces himself and his son to leave their brief safe haven and set to the road again, this time with a beach cart the father pulls along behind him to carry what they can from the shelter. The father coughs throughout THE ROAD and if you haven’t read the book you will still understand what will eventually happen to him.

THE ROAD might remind you of the excellent, but short-lived Showtime cable-TV show JEREMIAH with Luke Perry, Malcolm-Jamal Warner,and Sean Astin, in which a virus wipes out most of humanity, and which was cancelled way too soon for my taste. THE ROAD is far more realistic and serious than any TV series could hope to be, but I do recommend putting it on your Netflix list if post-apocalyptic horror is your kind of genre…as it is mine.

THE ROAD’s SpFx and Art Direction are astounding in their complexity and attention to detail, and will likely garner nominations as well for Mortensen and Aussie Director John Hillcoat.

THE ROAD is a moving account of what could happen in the worst of all possible situations and is possibly the most important film of your lifetime; it is certainly one of the most moving films I have ever seen. THE ROAD will stay with you long after you see it.

Watch more trailers at THE ROAD blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ © 2009 by Digital Dogs~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Digital Dogs rating: A

MPAA rating: R for some violence, disturbing images and languiage.

Running Times:  119 Minutes

Producers Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban, Marc Butan, Nick Wechsler, Steve Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz, Director John Hillcoat, Screenplay Joe Penhall adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, DP Javier Aguirresarobe, Editor Jon Gregory, Music Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Actors Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Garret Dillahunt, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Michael K. Williams

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		Digital Dogs, Gather Movies Correspondent - Los Angeles
	Digital Dogs' column, HOLLYWOOD POV, published every Thursday to Gather Essentials: Movies is an insider's look at the art, people, and product of Hollywood. Digital Dogs is an opinionated writer, editor, and digital designer who lives and works in the Entertainment Capital of the world. DigiDogs' unique reviews are usually written well before a film's release date, and definitely worth the advance look at the films that influence the world. Keep up with Digital Dogs' movie review series by joining her network, or subscribing to her content.