The Road review

Director: John Hillcoat

Adapter: Joe Penhall

DVD and Blu-ray release date: May 17 2010

Studio: Icon Home Entertainment

No of discs: 1

Region: 2

Price: From £11.99

Running time: 111 minutes

Certificate: 15

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker

After all the post-apocalyptic CGI drenched disaster films released with budgets seemingly wholly devoted to big screen special effects and star casts, The Road is a refreshing reinvention of this genre.

The multi-award winning Director of The Proposition, John Hillcoat, returns with an equally gritty character-driven story of a father and son trying to survive by any means as everything dies around them.

As the title suggests, The Road is a road movie based on a Cormac McCarthy novel following an unnamed father and son’s journey on foot from their home towards the coast, where they hope the blistering cold weather they are struggling to survive, will be milder.

In a dismally barren landscape where there is little food and what scraps can be eaten must be scavenged, no-one can be trusted as survival of the fitness or the least morally conscience reigns and cannibalism is rife.

Hillcoat creates a truly haunting image of dust bowl America; The trees are bare and collapsing daily, the elements are harsh, every day is greyer and there is no respite from the constant threat of attack by the few desperate other survivors roaming the land looking for food and an end to their misery. No hope of future regeneration appears likely, leaving the only escape from this lonely desperate existence through the barrel of a gun.

Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, Lord of the Rings) plays the father who will do anything to protect his son and prepare him for his eventual death so that he can learn the skills to survive alone. Relative newcomer and child TV star, Kodi Smit-Mcphee, plays his son who is to born into this post-apocalyptic world with little prospects of a future other than one preoccupied with the fight for survival.

Mortensen and Smit-Mcphee convincingly and sensitively play the father and son duo who have little to live for but each other. Mortensen’s wife played by Charlize Theron (Hancock, Monster, LA Confidential) wants to terminate her son before he is born into the gruelling post-apocalyptic existence she has endured for years but Mortensen’s character believes there is a reason to live with hopes for the future.

After Theron’s character refuses to coast through life hiding any longer and walks out of their house knowing she faces imminent death, Mortensen decides to respect her parting words and take their son south in search of warmth and hope.

The film follows this harrowing journey and some of the skills survivors must learn to safe guard themselves in this law-less society. More important than reaching the destination is what is learnt on the way. The film’s focus is the transformation of Smit-Mcphee’s character from a scared dependent boy being shown how to commit suicide if faced with cannibals to someone able to fend for himself, make his own life judgements and take care of the one he loves.

Thinking disaster movies had been done and dusted, The Road proves there is still plenty to explore with its thoroughly captivating and convincing performances and take on post-apocalyptic America, injecting some much needed realism into the genre.

Special Features:

BD-Live enabled (Blu-ray only)

Audio commentary by director John Hillcoat

Deleted and extended scenes

Making-of The Road featurette

Two theatrical trailers