Whoa, Hollywood, let’s back that hype train up. Yes, Tom Hanks and Paul Newman are the most bona fide movie stars of their respective generations; and yes, director Sam Mendes may very well turn out to be the best British filmmaker since David Lean. Unfortunately, taking three big names and throwing them into the mob mold does not a crime classic make.
Of course, the comparison everyone is rushing to make is to “The Godfather.” Both are literary adaptations, and both effectively display trademarks of good written storytelling. But the main thing separating the two and the key reason “Road to Perdition” could be one of those Best Picture winners that vanishes from the public consciousness a couple years later (see “The English Patient” or “Shakespeare in Love”) is each movie’s treatment of character development.
Francis Ford Coppola’s opus presented human characters with conflicts and made them suffer the consequences of their choices. Any overarching themes about the mafia lifestyle took a backseat to the simple story of a man, his family and their problems.
Mendes had this idea down pat in “American Beauty,” but he takes a decidedly more fatalistic view in “Road to Perdition.” The story’s scale is so huge and the characters are so larger than life that they lose much of their humanity and can’t help but become walking, talking symbols.
Thankfully, though, “Road to Perdition” has so many other things going for it (among them, Conrad Hall’s jaw-dropping cinematography as well as nicely tempered performances by Tom Hanks and Paul Newman) that character flaws seem negligible. Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a hit man orphaned as a child and raised by mob kingpin John Rooney (Newman, in his finest form since “The Color of Money”).
Sullivan does all he can to be a good father to his children and a good son to Rooney, but his world collapses after his son Michael Jr. (newcomer Tyler Hoechlin) witnesses Rooney’s hotheaded son Connor (Daniel Craig, “Tomb Raider”) execute a rabble-rousing associate.
Trying to eliminate his young witness, Connor mistakenly murders Sullivan’s younger son and wife. With nowhere left to turn, the remaining Sullivans take to the road in an effort to win John Rooney’s favor back, a journey that saddles Michael Sullivan with the burden of trying to be the father he can’t be and the son he wishes he could be.
The character of Michael Sullivan is a welcome change of pace for Hanks, who seems like he should be due for another lead in some Nora Ephron-penned dribbler by now. Just as it was refreshing (and a bit unnerving) to watch Denzel flaunt a ghetto-fabulous attitude in “Training Day,” it’s great to see one of Hollywood’s most recognizable good guys gun down an entire alley full of thugs and hide his smirk beneath a menacing mustache.
However, Hanks’ Sullivan feels like the only character that is completely fleshed-out and not buried beneath layers of allegory. This is due, in part, to David Self’s terse script (“Thirteen Days”), one that calls for disputes to be settled with the rattle of a tommy gun and not the waggle of a tongue.
The absence of chitchat allows for Mendes’ assured visual style to take over, and Hall (who won an Academy Award for “American Beauty”) brings it to life in sumptuous detail. The Depression-era details are flawless and perfectly complement the deliberate and brooding pace of the story.
“Road to Perdition” is definitely about family; or, more specifically, about paternalism in its many manifestations. For most people with a firm belief in free will (the Corleones, for example), interactions between father and son lead one down many different paths. But no matter how many levels on which Mendes explores these relationships, the journey down the “Road to Perdition” just doesn’t seem quite so exciting when the end is already in sight.
Grade: AB
