STUDIO: Sony | DIRECTOR: John Hillcoat | CAST: Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Kodi Smit-McPhee
RELEASE DATE: 5/25/2010 | PRICE: DVD$27.96, Blu-ray
$34.95
BONUSES: commentary, deleted and extended scenes, trailers
SPECS: R | 111 min. | Adventure | 2.35:1 widescreen | Dolby Digital 5.1 | English subtitlesRATINGS (out of 5): Movie
| Audio
When it comes to “laugh riots,” you can’t get any further from the term than The Road, director John Hillcoat’s appropriately bleak adaptation of Cormac McCarthy
Australian filmmaker Hillcoat, who helmed 2005’s intense western The Proposition, paces the anecdotal film leisurely, with tension slowly mounting with each passing episode. Those unfamiliar with the book will not know what awaits father and son around each corner, and those who have read it should be happy that Hillcoat remains true to the source.
The fact that the event that caused the near-annihilation of the world is never explained adds to the eeriness of the production, which also employs some spacey music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and effective CGI “desolation” effects. A subtly expressive Mortensen leads the small but uniformly excellent cast, and there are some surprise supporting turns throughout the proceedings.
The Road is admittedly a tough sell because of its downbeat content, but the book’s popularity and the recent cinematic success of the Coen Brothers’ translation of McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men certainly warrants more attention it received in theaters where it played on a limited basis. It’s likely that interested parties at home will find The Road worth travelling on DVD and Blu-ray despite of all of its ghostly perils.
The DVD and Blu-ray also comes with deleted and extended scenes and a commentary that gives information about the film’s production.
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Watching The Road, truly watching it, will leave you feeling that something was missing – something that has to do with Viggo’s character eventually feeling as if they’re being followed (not having read the book I strongly suspect this was indeed the case).
From a cinematic standpoint I enjoyed the subtleties: the ‘good guys’ (non converts to cannibalism) were often missing a diget or two, or surviving by eating dead bugs, the way – after it was made very, very clear that there was no plants/bugs/animals left alive in the world – a living beetle shows up. The way a man’s inability to see the potential for good kept him lost in the darkness of hell while a boy’s ability to hope brought back the light – quite literally – when he made the choice to trust.