While not exactly overlooked, as it was a critical and commercial success when it came out, even winning an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Road to Perdition remains conspicuously absent from Best-Of lists and cinephile fandoms. Tom Hanks considers it one of his best and most important roles, and one ripe for rediscovery, if not now, in 20 years. He’s right.
Road to Perdition starts out with a voiceover from Michael Sullivan Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) speaking about his father (Tom Hanks), an enforcer for Irish mobster John Rooney (Paul Newman). Curious about what his father does for a living, Michael Jr. stows away to see Sullivan Sr. and Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig), the boss’s son, assassinate a bootlegger suspected of stealing from Connor’s father. The elder Rooney is furious, shaming his son and then sending out Sullivan to collect a debt. On his way out, Connor gives Sullivan a letter to deliver, saying it’s from his father. When he delivers the letter, the debtor tries to kill Sullivan, who instead kills him and his bodyguard. He checks the letter, which reads “Kill Sullivan and all debts will be paid.” He realizes he’s been double-crossed, and that his family is in danger.
He comes home to a bloodbath, as Connor had killed his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and youngest son. Fortunately, Michael Jr. wasn’t home at the time and the pair set out in search of vengeance for the cold-blooded murder of their family. All the while, they’re pursued by Harlen Maguire (Jude Law), a killer-for-hire who also works as a crime scene photographer, who pursues the pair across the Midwest.
Road to Perdition unspools like a Greek tragedy as Sullivan and son doggedly pursue retribution. There’s only one way it can go, and it’s not unlikely to be a happy ending. It’s a movie full of bad men doing bad things, as Newman notes during a moving monologue in a church’s crypt. “There are only murderers in this room. This is the life we chose, the life we lead. There is only one guarantee – none of us will see heaven.” It’s a movie about family, about fathers protecting sons even when they’re not worth protecting. Sullivan has no choice but to avenge his family’s death. Rooney has no choice but to protect his son. Many will die along the way.
It’s grim and relentless, but it’s not without joy. There is lightness and sometimes even humor amidst the chaos and bloodshed, like Sullivan teaching Michael Jr. how to drive so he can be the getaway driver when they become bank robbers. Sullivan realizes what he’s been missing while busy working as an assassin, getting to know his son during the six weeks on the road. There are some genuinely sweet and tender moments while still staying true to the awkward stoicism so common between men and boys, especially in the 1930s.
Production-wise, everything about Road to Perdition is pure class – especially the music and cinematography. It’s a must-see for Conrad L. Hall’s cinematography alone. He captures the dizzying flatness and occasional flaming beauty of the American Midwest in full cinematic widescreen splendor, belonging beside other great American landscape films like David Lynch’s The Straight Story or Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. The aerial overhead shots – long before drones were a thing, it’s worth noting – of dusty Illinois cornfields and the Great Lakes are always going to inspire awe and wonder, naturally, but Hall doesn’t default to the epic. He pays just as much attention to the subtleties, like lingering close-ups of people smoking and blood-splattered tiles in a bathroom mirror. The film finds that sweet spot between the blockbuster and the arthouse that makes it as worthy of study as it does a bucket of popcorn. It’s well-deserving of its Academy Award, even in a year where The Pianist and Gangs of New York came out.
Thomas Newman’s score is equally praiseworthy, with its tin whistles and bodhráns holding true to the film’s Irish roots. It’s one of the most commented-on aspects of the movie and holds up surprisingly well, even without the visuals. It’s full of memorable cues and bittersweet melodies that bring a lot of heart to what can otherwise be a slightly slow, chilly film.
Every performance is exemplary, to boot, from the stoic violence of Hanks’ Sullivan Sr. to the psychopathic spoiled cynicism of Craig’s Connor to Paul Newman’s doomed kindness, in one of his last roles. Add in some truly impressive visual accuracy, with every aspect of Depression-era Chicago recreated in obsessive, vivid period detail, and Road to Perdition deserves to be remembered among the best movies of the 2000s.
Many movie lovers don’t seem to know what to do with the film. It was the much-hyped follow-up to director Sam Mendes’ debut, American Beauty, featuring rare gritty, almost unlikable performances from both Hanks and Law, who is genuinely ghoulish as Maguire. It earned $183 million at the box office, which isn’t bad, but only one-third as much as Fifty Shades of Grey or The Smurfs Movie, to put things in perspective. It deserves so much more love than that, worthy of recognition as one of the all-time great gangster films, at the least, belonging alongside classics like The Untouchables if not quite to the level of the first two Godfather films.
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