The Road to Perdition Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)July 11th, 2002
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There's something about this summer that makes it seem a lot more like late autumn. Sure, we've had plenty of brainless popcorn flicks, but there have also been a surprising number of intelligent films (The Bourne Identity, Minority Report) released over the last month that seem better suited for a late-year Oscar campaign than marquee space with movies like Reign of Fire and Scooby Doo. Another example of this phenomenon - and perhaps the best - is Road To Perdition, Sam Mendes' spectacular follow-up to the Oscar-winning American Beauty. It's 2002's best film thus far, and I'm skeptical that we'll see anything superior to it for the rest of the year.
"Perdition" refers to two things: It's a small town in Kansas to which our two protagonists are headed, as well as a fancy word meaning eternal damnation. Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks, Cast Away) and his 12-year-old son Michael, Jr. (newcomer Tyler Hoechlin) are on that titular road, but it remains unclear which definition of Perdition awaits them at the end of their journey.
The film takes place over six weeks in the winter of 1931. Sullivan is a hard-working family man, bringing home the bacon for Junior, wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Anniversary Party) and youngest boy Peter (Liam Aiken, Sweet November). They're a close, loving family with a big house, a huge yard and few problems, other than never being able to ask Dad about his day at work. See, Sullivan is a fearless and unflinching killing machine for the Rock Island, Illinois arm of the Chicago mob, which is controlled by the very same John Rooney (Paul Newman, Where the Money Is) who took a fatherless Sullivan under his wing when he was a boy.
Curious about his father's line of work, Junior hides in the backseat of the car and accompanies the unwitting Sullivan and Rooney's son Connor (Daniel Craig, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) to a late-night warehouse meeting that goes horribly wrong. Unseen and observing from a crack in the wall, like Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet, Junior watches his father slaughter a half-dozen men and then scrambles away in horror. But he's eventually noticed by Connor, who nearly offs him before Sullivan realizes who he is.
This one innocent incident is the catalyst for Perdition's story. A gunman is dispatched to kill Annie and the boys, while Sullivan is sent on a mission from which nobody expects him to return. But he does, and Junior isn't home when the killer comes a-calling, so the two hit the road, unable to take time to grieve the loss of their kin. I expected the wheels to fall off the story here, dreading a touchy-feely story about a father bonding with his son during unusual circumstances, but Perdition is much more than that. It focuses more on the revenge than the bonding, which makes the film very dark, very violent and somewhat heartbreaking.
Perdition is the third slick adaptation of a graphic novel in less than a year (following Ghost World and From Hell), and it's able to tell much more of a story than the vast majority of films adapted from more traditional sources (like that Ya-Ya bullshit, which was based on two full-length books). We get the one unusual father-son relationship between Sullivan and Junior, but two others are thrown in for absolutely no additional charge. The chemistry between Sullivan and Rooney positively crackles, while Rooney's strained rapport with Connor is a major force in Perdition's success (imagine a thinner, shrewder Vito Corleone with just one son, who is an unfortunate hybrid of bumbling Fredo and hotheaded Sonny).
Newman (who got help with his Irish accent from Frank McCourt), Craig and newcomer Hoechlin all do extremely well in their roles, as does Hanks, though his part is very subtle (his Sullivan is supposed to be a guy who nobody notices). Both Jude Law (A.I.), who briefly appears as a jaundiced, balding freelance press photographer/hitman with baked-bean teeth, and Stanley Tucci (Big Trouble), who plays Al Capone's right-hand man in Chicago, perform strongly in very small roles (Capone is never seen, though he and a big Eliot Ness subplot appear in the graphic novel, which was adapted for the screen by Thirteen Days' David Self).
Mendes proves that the overwhelming success of his feature-film debut was no fluke with Perdition, which, like Beauty, was photographed by the great Conrad L. Hall. There's a scene early in the film depicting a big Irish funeral, and Hall shoots it so well, you can practically smell the cigar smoke and whiskey. But he's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Perdition's behind-the-camera talent. Thomas Newman's (an Oscar winner for Beauty) score is nearly perfect, hampered only by its similarity to his theme for Six Feet Under. Moulin Rouge's Oscar-nominated editor Jill Bilcock shows she isn't really a crack-addicted ferret, while the team of production, set, art and costume designers (Dennis Gassner, Nancy Haigh, Richard L. Johnson and Albert Wolsky) have all logged time on the Coen brothers' many period films or took home Oscars for their work in Bugsy. Soup to nuts, Perdition is as beautiful a film as you'll see this year.
1:59 - R for violence and language
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