ROAD TO PERDITION

[MARCBLEE]

ROAD TO PERDITION

Synopsis: Michael Sullivan Sr. (Tom Hanks) is a gangster in 1930s Chicago. One day he is followed by his son, Michael Sullivan Jr., who witnesses him and an associate kill someone. Michael Sr. saves his son's life by promising his son won't squeal, but his manic partner decides to permanently silence them both in a set-up. However, he instead succeeds in murdering Sullivan's wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Jr's brother. Both Sullivans seek revenge, in the process running up against Al Capone's (Alfred Molina) men and an assassin.

You might call Michael Sullivan a typical old-school dad.

Loving yet remote, in that pre-Oprah way, he seldom says much about anything, especially his work. But then Michael has a special reason for keeping the particulars of his job quiet.

In Road to Perdition, Tom Hanks dons a dark suit, a long black overcoat and a black fedora. Then, he picks up the suitcase holding his Tommy gun and sets off for a night's work.

Tom Hanks as a hit man? The Oscar-winning good guy goes for his greatest stretch ever in this 1930s Irish-American mob drama.

Maybe clothes do make the man. And the incongruous mustache helps. But Hanks' eyes, so familiar, sympathetic and kind, give him away. No wonder he keeps his fedora pulled low on his brow for much of the movie. Who could believe America's Every-man as a killer?

He is. He's a “professional” killer.

Early in Road to Perdition, Michael (Tom Hanks) runs afoul of his old mob bosses and finds himself on the run with his 12-year-old son, Michael Jr. What he's after is revenge against a certain mobster who has done him and his family wrong.

In the meantime, he'll settle for survival.

At the heart of the film is the bond between Michael and his son, and the story of how that bond deepens as they travel together through the tough, sad heart of Depression-era America.

The son must learn to accept the father for what he is, warts and all. The father must learn to see the son in a new way -- to see the man he will become.

"What's Poppa's job?"

He works for Mr. Rooney.

"But what's his job?"

He goes on missions .

It's a remarkably straightforward narrative with a primitive pulp potency.

Although the movie is in color, you remember it mostly in terms of its stark contrasts: the glint of the moon on the period cars as they prowl through the bleak, stormy nights.

The director is Sam Mendes, whose previous film was the Oscar-winning American Beauty. Part melodrama, part gangster flick, part road picture (the actual title was inspired by the lighthearted Hope-Crosby ones), Road to Perdition is, like American Beauty, mainly a film about family.

American Beauty, however, had a whole lot of "attitude." How much you liked it largely depended on whether you shared its perspective.

Road to Perdition doesn't force you to take a position so much as it invites you to reflect on what you see and hear.

You wonder what to think about Michael. As a fatherless child, he was taken in by John Rooney (Paul Newman), a mob kingpin with a soft spot for kids.

Michael didn't really choose to become an enforcer. Rather, he accepted it, the way folks in the movie's Midwest accept the harsh winters.

At first it seems odd to consider Tom Hanks, Hollywood's quintessential Mr. Nice Guy, as a professional killer. But watching this film, you realize that it may need every ounce of Hanks' likability to keep you on Michael's side.

Sporting a small, shifty mustache and, often, the stubble of trouble, shrouded in a trench coat and fedora, Hanks' character is like a soldier who does his job because he must.

It's an admirably economical performance, the kind that's as effective for what he refrains from doing as for what he does. Brooding and determined, Hanks doesn't waste a word or a gesture.

In a funny, very telling scene, a laconic Michael negotiates with his son, who has just demanded a share of some mob booty they've jointly appropriated.

When Sr. asks Jr. how much, he wants, Jr. names an innocently low figure. After Sr. agrees, Jr. asks if he could have gotten more. Sr. tells Jr.: You'll never know.

The point of the scene, and the source of its humor, is this: Michael Jr. has grown up enough to assert his rights, but he's still too much of a kid to know what they are. In other words, he's coming of age.

Earlier in the film, Hanks and Newman, as son and surrogate father, play a piano duet that's as memorable in its own way as the duet that Hanks and Robert Loggia played with their feet on the giant keyboard in Big.

Without speaking, Hanks and Newman show us the warmth their characters share.

Newman, in fact, often steals the show. Affecting a light brogue, he's an Irish Godfather who knows what sort of evil business he's in. Yet he likes to think of himself as somehow decent.

"Mistakes," he admits at a wake. "We all make 'em."

But what is most striking, is the blunt, matter-of-fact way these characters act and talk about the situations they find themselves in. There are no hysterics. From Newman and Stanley Tucci (as a rival mob boss) to Jennifer Jason Leigh (Sullivan's wife) and Jude Law, who plays a sadistic murderer,  who’s assigned to ice Michae,  likes to photograph his murder scenes, no one loses his cool.

"To be paid to do what you love," Maguire tells Michael, one pro to another. "Ain't that the dream?"

And unlike Michael, Maguire may truly love his dirty work. His cold, wild eyes, shark's grin and insistent stoop suggest an unsettling eagerness. His tapered fingers, with their ragged nails, seem tailor-made to pull triggers.

As Michael Jr., the one who tells this tale, young Tyler Hoechlin suggests intelligence, independence and the contrariness of pain.

Fathers and sons, and the uneasy bonds between them, rarely have received such a sophisticated and unsentimental treatment on the big screen as they do in this marvelous film.

Hanks holds his own in this company. It's a performance reminiscent of Gregory Peck's first bad-guy turn, in The Gunfighter. The mustache, the menacing wardrobe and the studied way he handles a gun are not enough to make us believe, for a minute, that he's not the good father and moral man he has become so good at playing.

If that's a knock, it's one easily borne by Hanks. Who wouldn't want to be known as the cinema's eternal Good Guy? It's not so much the quality of the work but the ambition he shows in trying this, that is laudable.

When Hanks and Newman sit at a piano and pick out a melancholy Irish air, there's a hint of Hanks' famous "Chopsticks" duet in Big. But there's also a sense that a little bit of the hard-earned integrity and acting guts that have been the watchwords of Newman's career are being handed off to an actor who may finally transcend being our favorite Mr. Nice Guy.

Tough and taut, and emotionally sure, Road to Perdition stays true to its course, right to the bitter, or bittersweet, end.

Unlike so many recent films, this one is about something more than its own flashiness.

For me, it was short of a masterpiece.

My Score: 9 out of 10

[Werewolf]

Sounds like a very interesting film with an completly new role for Mr. Hanks. I´m looking forward to see it.

[Werewolf]

Wow, I´ve just seen the trailer and it seems to bee a terrific film. I´m really looking forward to see it!

[archer84]

Tom Hanks is in the movie? It must be a great movie, even if the story is bad.

[Werewolf]

believe me, download the trailer, it´s brilliant!

[Werewolf]

So, ich habe ihn gesehen!

Ein super, genialer Film. Ich darf nur jedem empfehlen, ihn sich mal anzusehen.

[Daniel Räbiger]

This movie sucks - sorry

the story is predictable, off from the first scene where the boy stands at the beach i knew tom hanks would die after every problem has been solved...

the story was fordable and you could clearly see that it was taken from a comic. the movie would have been good if it were about 60 minutes long... but for a three hour movie it was just boring.

the acting is really good and the shots are really colorful and good but i was missing the emotion that you feel WITH the charakters...

[seinfeld]

You nail it DR!

Anyway I wouldn't say it sucks.

Although the story is in fact way too predictable, it is still a good movie. The actors are fine and it is beautifully photographed. So I give a 6.5 out of ten

[archer84]

Hab ihn jetzt auch gesehen. Tom Hanks war zwar wieder gut, aber trotzdem fehlte em Film das gewisse etwas, dass ich erwartet hatte. Ein emotionales Gespräch ziwschen Vater und Sohn hat gefehlt. Trotzdem war der Film recht gut. Auch wenn er nicht den Oskar als bester Film bekommen wird.