Road to Perdition is a slow-moving, ponderous, predictable morality play that offers no interesting insights into... well, anything, hard as it might try. Hanks plays Mike Sullivan, a (gasp!) hitman... but a noble hitman, who does what he does out of gratitude to crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), who's like a father to him. When Hanks' son Michael (Tyler Hoechlin) witnesses his father and Rooney's son Connor (Daniel Craig) committing a murder, the boy becomes, in the Rooneys' eyes, a liability (why, exactly, isn't clear. Who's he going to tell? Law enforcement seems to be non-existent). Hanks and his son take to the road to escape the Rooneys and the hitman (a lupine Jude Law) they send after the Sullivans.
In a New York Times Magazine story, screenwriter David Self says he and Mendes wanted to explore "how ... you introduce your children to the idea that we're all morally compromised." Uh, by shooting a bunch of people and then saying, "Do as I say, not as I do"? More interesting is the theme of father-son relationships, but the most intriguing ones -- between Newman and his biological and surrogate sons -- aren't fully explored. I was far more invested in which son Newman would choose when pushed -- blood or loyalty -- than in Hanks' predictable relationship with his boy (come on -- does anyone think Tom Hanks would take a role in which he encourages his son to become a cold-blooded killer?).
The movie is full of ponderous symbolism. For example, I had liked the title -- "perdition" is such an archaically elegant word -- until we learn that the town in which the Sullivans hope to take refuge is called Perdition. How banal. When Sullivan and his son flee their home, the camera lingers on the boy's bicycle, abandoned forlornly in the snow -- like his childhood. Everything is spelled out; little is left for the audience to interpret. As Hanks and Law face off in a diner, each pretending to be unaware of who the other is, a single drop of sweat creeps down Hanks's face. It's a lovely, subtle detail -- until Law remarks on it, making sure to draw the audience's attention to it and negating the careful visual set-up that should have been allowed to speak for itself.
The look of the film is dark and grim (the few touches of levity come mainly from hackneyed, "kids do the darndest things" gags), but it doesn't carry off its murkiness with much style, the way, say, L.A. Confidential did. The period details are meticulous, but only a few scenes are truly beautiful.
A couple of gems of scenes sparkle, though. Hanks and Newman dueting on a piano with perfect accord neatly illustrates their relationship (and maybe echoes Hanks' piano duet with Robert Loggia in Big). And when Newman and his son face off across a conference table, the electricity is palpable.
It's no coincidence that all the good scenes include Newman. No one else in the movie can compete with his committed, powerful performance. When he and Hanks go head to head toward the end of the film, it's no contest -- he simply blows Hanks off the screen without even trying. Hanks has a few nice moments on his own, but he's out of his depth with the complex character Sullivan should have been. Tyler Hoechlin, as his son, is decent enough but clearly playing a role rather than really feeling what his character is going through. Law is entertainingly predatory but can't do anything with the two-dimensional character he's been handed; Daniel Craig suffers the same fate. You get the sense in his scenes with Newman that something deeper is there, but he doesn't get a chance to do more than standard psychopath.
To be fair to the movie, I was in a pissy mood that not even a free Starbucks coupon could jolly me out of. Today was apparently Take Your Sweet Fucking Time Day, only no one bothered to tell me. I waited half an hour to see a doctor in the morning because her receptionist forgot to tell her I was there, waited an hour for a phlebotomist to get around to drawing my blood, raced to work as soon as I could stand up without fainting, spent a few frantic hours cleaning up my not-my-real-boss's messes, raced to my chiropractor, waited half an hour for her to see me for five minutes, for which I'm expected to pay $20 (we'll see about that), then dashed up to the theater to see the movie. After the movie, the bus I was waiting for was more than 20 minutes late, meaning I missed my connecting bus in Georgetown by two minutes and had to pay for a cab home. Do you notice that at no point do I mention eating? That's because I didn't eat all fucking day. Except for a vile little Centrum nutrition bar that I got for free and wasn't worth the price.
So you can see where my mood might have colored my perception of the movie. On the other hand, I was in a similarly bad mood when I went to see American Beauty, and it transcended the petty frustrations of my day. So we know Sam Mendes is capable of conquering my bad mood -- he just didn't do it here.
(And on the way home, I saw a man hanging a Confederate flag on the balcony of a room at the Holiday Inn in Rosslyn. What kind of redneck jackass travels with a Confederate flag? Okay, I just answered my own question. But really -- what the hell was he thinking? Did he want to get the shit kicked out of him but was too lazy to walk to a bar and pick a fight?)
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