Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron

Director: John Hillcoat

Screenplay: Joe Penhall

Running-time: 1 hr 51 mins

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:


Let’s admit, apocalyptic movies are highfalutin concepts. It’s a self-satisfied genre populated by films that usually require budgets of epic proportions, demolition of famous global landmarks (cue blowing up of the White House, or the crumbling of Eiffel Tower into pieces), total abandonment of tourist attractions subsequently beset by a horde of undead creatures, generally cataclysmic events to which people like Roland Emmerich, George A. Romero and Will Smith specialise in. The over-familiarity of the genre has only very little room for new additions to work around with, but John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s doomsday novel The Road fortunately sidesteps the genre’s redundant elements. Here, there are no landmarks to blow up, cities to inundate with waves and obligatory shots of vast masses of anguished humans clawing each other in desperation. Instead, Hillcoat delivers something sparse, admirably restrained doomsday portrait, wherein all that apocalyptic stuff are just backdrop hints. There’s an opener that involves a blazing fire that we never see, and fast-forward to a scorched, ashen Earth with nature looking like post-inferno cinders. Surviving humans roam the ground, feeding on whatever flesh they come across, including their own species.


At the core of this story is a road journey of two central characters we know as Man and his Son, whose survival lies on a gun with two bullets and, of course, each other. It’s a fascinating backbone of the film, and the relationship between the Father and Son is touchingly portrayed by Viggo Mortensen and young Kodi Smit-McPhee, but where The Road focuses on these two empathetic figures, it lacks a rigid structure in plotting, making this often aimless and wandering. Both traverse across this God-blasted world and reach the coast (as many other doomsday flicks, characters tend to head towards continental coastlines for some deliverance), stumbling across cannibals, innocent difters and pitiless crooks, and then finally resolving into a finale that doesn’t quite deliver the emotional wallop we’ve been expecting throughout. What was supposed to be a deeply poignant ending ends up feeling contrived and presumptuous via your typical Hollywood cheapo raise-your-spirits sentimentality.



VERDICT:

John Hillcoat’s The Road has some admirable restraint and noteworthy performances, but this post-apocalyptic journey often wanders aimlessly, free from a rigid structure that doesn’t quite nail the emotional wallop it promises at the onset.


RATING: B-