Review: 'The Road' is the feel good movie of the year

Dimension Films

The Road starts with shots of green leaves and colorful trees. Hold on to these moments and enjoy them because the rest of the film is a grey and dreary tale of survival and humanity.

The story is very simple. Viggo Mortensen (Appaloosa) plays The Man, and he is traveling through an apocalyptic wasteland with his son, The Boy, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. These characters don't have names because what good is a name in a dead world? The Man and The Boy are on the move in a cold and grey world. There is no explanation as to how the world came to its demise, and again, what good what that do? Everything has been rendered practically uninhabited, and nothing is going to change it.

The movie takes a minimalist approach to just about everything: minimal characters, minimal dialog, minimal effects. It is just a story of survival. The Man is tested in how far he would go to protect his child, as "protection" in this world can boil down to murder-suicide. The Man has two bullets left, and he saving them for himself and his son. Better to humanely kill his own offspring than to let roaming gangs of cannibals catch them. As The Man and The Boy head toward the coast, hoping for something different, they avoid these gangs, scavenge for food and try to stay warm.And that's really the crux of the plot. Things do happen to them, but it all goes down in a very episodic manner. They maneuver from obstacle to obstacle and try to stay alive. What the movie lacks in actual plot development though, it makes up for in characterization. The Man struggles mightily throughout the film, so desperate to protect his child and prepare him for survival on his own. And as time goes on, he moves further away from the civilized man he once was. He has to reassure The Boy that they are still the good guys after they kill a person in the name of survival. When they finally find some food, his son has to beg his father to help an elderly survivor they meet along the road, and when a thief steals their belongings, he catches up to the thief and exacts harsh revenge, much to the chagrin of The Boy. If it wasn't for his son, who knows what craziness The Man would have committed in order to survive?The Boy, meanwhile, is dealing with living in a world that he was born into. His Mother (portrayed in flashbacks and dreams by the excellent actress Charlize Theron) was pregnant with him when the world went to Hell, and giving birth to him pretty much killed her emotionally. He worries about his father just as much as his father worries about him, and he seems to worry about their own souls existentially, as he wonders about that line that separates the good from the bad.And while the movie is bleak and harsh, there is a nugget of hope of survival as The Man and The Boy fight for their lives, and the film becomes far more than an exercise in dourness. The acting is stellar all around, including great small performances from Robert Duvall, Garret Dillahunt, Michael K. Williams and Guy Pearce (this is actually the second movie this year to have a great one-scene performance from Pearce after The Hurt Locker). The film is directed by Australian John Hillcoat (The Proposition), who again uses Nick Cave and Warren Ellis to come up with an evocative and atmospheric score, and Hillcoat's sure handed direction keeps the minimalist approach from getting boring and keeps the movie from being just too damn depressing. Pretty much the only people who really wouldn't like this movie are those who need constantly upbeat entertainment, and the tourism boards of Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Oregon, as Hillcoat found many naturally derelict and run down areas to film in. The natural locations add an air of authenticity to the movie; it's actually a little scary how these places exist because people have let the areas die, which just makes it easier to imagine a dreary world of The Road as being a real possibility.

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