The Endless Roads of Road to Perdition (2002)

After waging war in so many polls, Road to Perdition finally won one. There weren't many votes cast overall, I guess seeing the repeated titles of "Runner up" polls is getting boring? Not sure, but they're always good to fall back on and give a chance to something that, at one point, a lot of people wanted us to see.

I'm not sure why I never saw Road to Perdition before, I just recall the trailers for it on the TV not being particularly attention grabbing. I do like Tom Hanks though, and I do like gangsters, so I had hopes that it would be good. Find out what I found in the film right after the jump, and I'll see if I can't drive my point home.


For those who also haven't seen it, let me just set the scene for you. Tom Hanks plays Michael Sullivan. He has a family, and is the right hand man for the local mob boss John Rooney, played by Paul Newman. He is sent to deliver messages, and to make sure they understand said messages. Sometimes that's with words. Sometimes it's with more. One night on one of these missions, Michael's son sneaks into the car and ends up witnessing a murder which his father was apart of. John's son, Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig) becomes paranoid and strikes out trying to kill Michael and his family. Sadly, Connor manages to get Michael's wife and youngest son. With his eldest son in tow, they hit the road to find safety, and revenge.

When I started this movie, I want to make it clear that I only knew Tom Hanks was in the film, and I was surprised to see Daniel Craig, and later Jude Law show up. As for Paul Newman as the old mob boss, I completely and totally didn't even recognize him. Even knowing it's Paul Newman, I still don't see the resemblance! Tom Hanks did a good job acting, but honestly his character was a little plain. Paul Newman was more interesting, not being a stereotypical mob boss, but I was surprised to find Daniel Craig and Jude Law both kinda... boring. Lastly, I didn't really like the son, who was played by Tyler Hoechlin. I'm not sure what it was, i just didn't like him.

I noticed a bit of a style in the way Sam Mendes shoots his scenes

What I did like, however, was the cinematography! So many long wide shots caught my eye. You'll even see that them in the images I picked for this article. I think it could be the first time I've noticed a director's style of filming, because I can remember plenty of shots like these in American Beauty as well. That director is Sam Mendes, by the way, and he also did Jarhead and this is the first time I've ever actually had any interest in seeing Jarhead, but I can't deny that I do want to see it now.

Of these shots that caught my eye, there was one in particular. When Michael and Michael Jr. drive all night to escape, they arrive in Chicago to an awe inspiring scene. The son wakes up in the back seat of the car and is greeted with skyscrapers, which he's probably never seen before. As far as he knows, Chicago is the height of human advancement. This is the thought that popped in my head. To the people of that time, that posh living and tall city, still clean and with everyone having these new fancy cars, this was the most advanced man was. Now we look back and see a quaint town or "ye olde shoppes" and antique cars. It just made me wonder what the world would look like in the same amount of time in our future, and will they make movies that look back to now and people will think "look at those antique cars and old quaint way of living."

Welcome to Chicago

Anyways, back to the movie. There wasn't actually much besides some of the acting and the cinematography that really impressed me. There was a cool artistic shoot-out in the rain that was pretty impressive, and it had good music, but I don't think I ever really noticed the music in the rest of the movie. There wasn't much special about the story; it was pretty straight forward, and even had a very predicable ending.

I've always had the impression that lots of people love this movie, but I don't really get it. It certainly wasn't bad, but it felt mostly ordinary to me. Maybe I've see too many other movies similar to this now, but only the cinematography really popped out to me. I've certainly see all the big name actors do far better in many other films. I really wanted to love this movie, but there just wasn't enough in it's slow crawling plot to hook me like I wished it had.