Road to Perdition
April 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Though severely flawed, this movie was still one of the best of 2002, thanks to superb acting and award-caliber cinematography that caught everyone’s attention. Simply laid out, it is a gangland story of revenge and retribution. Tom Hanks, carrying extra weight and a skimpy, apologetic moustache, plays Michael Sullivan, who lost his father at an early age and was brought up by gang leader John Rooney, deliciously played by veteran Paul Newman. Sullivan’s son, not coincidentally named Michael, Jr., curious to know what his father does for a living, stows away in his father’s car and witnesses a mob killing perpetrated by Rooney’s son, Connor. Though Sullivan swears that the boy is his son and therefore good to keep quiet, Rooney sets out to have the whole Sullivan family killed. He succeeds in part, leaving Michael and the boy temporarily free, pursued by Maguire, a hired killer played to the nines by Jude Law. While Sullivan is being pursued, he can only think of revenge and getting even with Connor. Though revenge is a strong theme here, the movie is ultimately about father-son relationships and again points out that blood is thicker than water. Even when Sullivan proves to Rooney that Connor has been embezzling money from his organization, Rooney sides with his son, rather than the man who is "like a son."

Though the movie is good entertainment and easy on the eye, it could have been much more. It starts out as a memory piece, with young Michael, Jr. standing back to the audience, and a narrative voiceover on the soundtrack: "Some say Michael Sullivan was a good man…." But after this brief introduction is over, the device is tossed out and the point of view lost. The hazy memory is only there in the visuals. The sets look like Hollywood sets, and the costumes look like period costumes. The incessant snow and rain, caught so beautifully in the photography of Conrad Hall, is too perfect. Not since Nestor Almendros shot Days of Heaven has photography seemed so caught up in itself rather than serving the story at hand. However, that is really not Hall’s fault; he really serves the story better than the script does.

Hanks -- always a brilliant actor -- plays Sullivan as a memory dad, a good-guy/bad-guy. As the voiceover says at the end of the movie: "When people ask me if Michael Sullivan was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them he was my father." Jude Law’s villain is larger than life, a legend created over a period, again a memory. He’s a photographer who gleefully kills people so he can photograph their dead bodies. When we first meet him, he is photographing a man who hasn’t quite expired, so Maguire helps him along to meet his end. His portrayal is the stuff of nightmares: a man who personifies pure evil.

This visual approach would all work, had Michael, Jr.’s viewpoint been preserved on the soundtrack. I am not crazy about narration in movies as a rule, but there are times when it works, and this movie, since it starts and ends with one, could have made good use of the device during the body of the film. As it is, we are left to find out what Michael remembers only through the visuals, including the face of young Tyler Hoechlin, an earnest and likable young actor, but one who simply doesn’t have the depth to pull it off without text to help him. Mendes would have done well to have studied To Kill a Mockingbird, a perfect memory-piece movie that really pulls off the idea of a blurred and amplified past.

The DVD looks fabulous. All that storybook photography is reproduced in detail in a state-of-the-art anamorphic transfer. A rain-soaked street massacre, which occurs about two-thirds through the film, is especially impressive, as is the visually disturbing, forced-perspective initial appearance of Maguire. The soundtrack is excellent: rich, warm, and atmospheric, yet capable of delivering every second of dialogue with absolute clarity. The extras include an informative and friendly commentary from the director, several fun-to-watch deleted scenes, and an HBO documentary on the making of the movie. That’s on the edition reviewed here, which is the "Widescreen Edition." In addition to this one, there is the "DTS Widescreen Edition," which contains DTS 5.1 tracks as well as the Dolby Digital ones, but drops the HBO documentary. There’s also a "Full Screen Edition" as well. So, when you grab one off the shelf, read carefully to make sure you are getting the right one. I would go with this one, never having been convinced that DTS sound is that much better than Dolby Digital.

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