In a sentenceThe world has ended and Viggo Mortensen still has to get his son through the day
After an apocalypse, a father and son travel through a barren landscape where the natural world is dying. The family at the centre of the story comprises Father (Viggo Mortensen), Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Mother (Charlize Theron). The journey follows Father and Boy, with the adult trying to keep his child alive in surroundings that offer little safety. Dead trees fall, and the two travellers face the loneliness of a world stripped of ordinary life. Father must protect Boy from danger while remaining the person the child depends on for tenderness and reassurance.
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John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel is harrowing and tender, with Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee convincing as a father and son struggling to survive. The repeated hardships can drag, but their performances reward the discomfort.
The Road is a strong, sometimes wearing survival drama whose best reason for enduring the misery is its father and son. John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel takes their dependence on each other seriously, without making the journey easy to watch. There is little relief in this dying landscape. The interest lies in how Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee make a family credible under such pressure. When the film gives them room, its severity feels justified.
Javier Aguirresarobe’s muted cinematography makes the barren surroundings feel exhausting to cross, and the images stay bleak without becoming merely decorative. Chris Kennedy’s production design gives the same desolation a convincing physical presence; this looks like somewhere people would struggle to live. We flinched at the sound of dead trees falling. The sudden noise makes the surroundings feel dangerous, even before we consider what people might do to one another, and gives these empty places something more frightening than silence.
Viggo Mortensen gives Father enough emotional range to prevent grimness becoming his only characteristic. His care for Boy is convincing, and so is the strain of having to provide protection when there is so little reassurance to offer. Kodi Smit-McPhee gives Boy a presence of his own, so that the relationship does not depend entirely on the adult’s performance. Their tenderness is particularly affecting because it does not require the film to pretend that the surroundings have become any less hostile.
Joe Penhall’s screenplay has a difficult job in giving this journey shape without making its hardships feel arranged for our benefit. It does not always succeed. Some episodes blur together, and Jon Gregory’s editing cannot quite stop the accumulation of suffering from becoming predictable: after a while, another ordeal has less effect. At those points we begin to notice the film insisting on its seriousness, and the bond between the two leads has to sustain our interest through scenes that tell us little more about them.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis provide a mournful score that suits the film’s loneliness. It helps the tenderness between Father and Boy register without turning their relationship into a comforting escape from everything around them. The music is doing delicate work, since too much consolation would make the desolation feel less credible. Mostly it judges that balance well, supporting the performances rather than trying to make every hardship a separate occasion for tears.
For a survival drama, The Road offers unusually little pleasure in the business of staying alive. That can make its 111 minutes feel long, but turning the desolation into a succession of satisfying problems to solve would weaken what the two leads achieve. The patience it asks for is mostly repaid by the attention given to their relationship. We recommend it with a warning about the repeated hardships, which sometimes test our endurance without telling us anything more about Father or Boy. Save it for an evening when neither person on the sofa needs cheering up.
Most critics respond positively to The Road, with praise centred on the father-and-son relationship and the convincing desolation around them. The reviews repeatedly credit Viggo Mortensen with giving the bleak journey emotional weight, while the stark photography makes the ruined landscape feel credible and threatening. Even several of the more reserved responses find the film affecting, admiring its seriousness, its tension and the tenderness between its central characters.
The spread runs from enthusiastic approval to mixed assessments, with no wholly negative verdicts. Reservations concern stretched passages, repetitive episodes and how successfully the film translates the novel to the screen. Slant Magazine finds the adaptation overly literal despite strong performances, while Collider argues that the relentless bleakness makes the journey feel pointless, even as it acknowledges Mortensen’s emotional range. The main disagreement is over whether the human connection gives that suffering enough purpose.
Ebert finds the bleak adaptation affecting and emotionally powerful. He singles out the father-and-son relationship as its central strength.
Read the full review →Jolin finds the film a chillingly effective, emotionally resonant vision of the apocalypse, despite some stretched passages. He particularly praises the tender, affecting father-son moments and the lead performances.
Read the full review →The review treats the adaptation as soberingly serious and gives it a positive verdict. It praises the convincing desolation of the post-apocalyptic landscape.
Read the full review →The review suggests the film’s ending is emotionally affecting, even for cynics. It singles out the ending’s faint flicker of hope as the source of that response.
Read the full review →Tobias finds the film visually haunting but dramatically flat, with episodes that blur together and an ending that turns sentimental. He especially praises the evocative images of a dying earth and the chilling sound of dead trees falling.
Read the full review →The critic finds the adaptation admirable and haunting, though its bleakness may limit its audience. They praise its rigorously realistic approach and the barren world created by the director and cinematographer.
Read the full review →
Leave No TraceAnother parent and child on the margins, with quieter dangers and comparable tenderness.
Time of the Wolf · not on Fi1m yetCivilisation fails again, and small acts of decency become difficult to sustain.
StalkerA forbidding landscape tests three travellers, with patience replacing the usual action.
The Night of the HunterChildren face adult cruelty in a landscape that keeps turning unfamiliar.
Children of MenAnother dying world, with urgent action and a stubborn concern for vulnerable lives.
