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A father (Viggo Mortensen) defends his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) from marauding cannibals in “The Road.” |
A bleak and barren tale of a post-Apocalyptical world where bands of cannibals hunt down, kill and digest their own kind, “The Road” leads to a hollow and laughable ending that so desperately wants to be sweet, it’s sickening.
I have no idea exactly how Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 futuristic novel “The Road” ended, but John “The Proposition” Hillcoat’s dreary drama wants us to believe that even as the world is dying, the nuclear family unit can still be a happy one.
The cannibals are far more believable.
Viggo Mortensen stars as an unnamed father and husband who has two bullets in a revolver. He is taking his young unnamed son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) across a desolate countryside to nowhere in particular. The bullets are for the dad and son, in case the cannibals catch them.
In a series of prolonged flashbacks, the father remembers his recent, harrowing past.
Some kind of world crisis has struck. Civilization has collapsed. Plants have stopped growing. Livestock have died off. Food is so scarce that humanity has devolved into roving gangs that eat anyone they find who doesn’t belong to their gang. That’s after they rape and kill them, without regard to age or sex.
The man used to be married to an attractive wife (Charlize Theron). But the ugliness, the violence and the fear prove too great for her sensitive nature. (Read more…)