Road to Perdition
Composite Score: 81.39
Starring: Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman, Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Dylan Baker, Stanley Tucci, and Jude Law
Director: Sam Mendes
Writers: Max Collins, Richard Piers Rayner, and David Self
Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller
MPAA Rating: R for violence and language
Box Office: $181 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Road to Perdition tells the story of a small-town mob enforcer’s quest for vengeance with his pre-teen son after the murder of his wife and young son. It features Tom Hanks starring as Michael Sullivan and Tyler Hoechlin as his 12-year-old son Michael Jr. who witnesses a mob murder, forcing them to go on the run after the murderer mistakenly kills the wrong people in an attempt to silence Michael Jr. The film is a solid revenge story that also contains an exploration of the relationships between fathers and their sons.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
The most difficult aspect of this film for me to believe is Tom Hanks as a mob enforcer. He kills a lot of people in cold blood in this film, gunning people down in the street, in bathtubs, in seedy offices, in quiet hotel rooms, basically anywhere you could think of for a 1930s mob hit to happen, he kills someone there. Perhaps in the early 2000s, Tom Hanks wasn’t as equivocal with nice wholesome guy – he was coming off of the Saving Private Ryan, You’ve Got Mail, Toy Story 2, The Green Mile, and Cast Away at this point, so maybe a little bit of both. Recently, though, his most violently intense role is probably as the titular captain in Captain Phillips, which came out in 2013 (14 films ago), so you can see my problem. Once you get past the violent Tom Hanks character though, it becomes a fairly watchable mob movie.
The only other glaring issue is that the film struggles to maintain excitement. For a revenge thriller, the film moves slowly throughout its 2-hour runtime. Part of what makes it good is the character study, but for people looking for a shoot-em-up mob thriller about a man getting revenge on the men who wronged his family, there’s a lot more father-son bonding and driving around rural Illinois than there is intense plotting or killing or even bank robbing, which does feature briefly in the third act as part of a montage.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
Because it limits the action of the film, the character development of its leads shines. Hank’s Sullivan and his relationship with his son Michael Jr. is well-juxtaposed against the relationship between Paul Newman’s John Rooney and his son Connor, played by Daniel Craig. Sullivan’s love for his son is portrayed as much more selfless and wholesome despite the aggressive nature of his own job and background. Rooney’s love for his son comes across as more self-serving and harmful despite the fact that Rooney is much more well-off and much less hands-on with the crime than Sullivan. Even the pseudo father-son relationship between Rooney and Sullivan contrasts with Rooney’s relationship to Connor. Because of Rooney’s flaws, both of his filial wards have severe flaws that ultimately leave all three adult men dead by the end of the film (reaching their destination of Perdition, implicitly).
The film also does a good job of building suspense and paying it off throughout the film. Perhaps mildly telegraphed, the film’s various climaxes and moments of action are well-set-up and feel earned throughout. Jude Law’s hitman Maguire, who is hired to kill Sullivan and Michael, is a glaring foil to Sullivan both in physical features and in their approach to the job. Every clash between the two men feels like a meeting of two equally opposing forces with powerful stakes. The film’s final confrontation between the two especially resonates, bringing the full force of the film’s conflict home – not a conflict between opposing men but between opposing ideologies and futures for Sullivan’s son Michael. The conflict is well-crafted and fits into the more character-centric narrative very well, not ever feeling overly out of place in the otherwise plodding film.
Suspending disbelief about Tom Hanks’s ability to be a violent killer is necessary to fully enjoy Road to Perdition, but the film’s strong relational commentaries and juxtapositions and its well-crafted conflict reward viewers for their suspension. Do not go in looking for GoodFellas, instead look for a father-son narrative featuring mob ties and some Tom Hanks hits, and this will be the film for you. Definitely worth watching.
