(NOTE: Certain plot details are given below. It is not crucial to enjoyment of the movie for these to come as surprises, but if you don't want to know anything at all about the plot, please skip this review.)
Road to Perdition certainly got me thinking--but not about anything the filmmakers would likely have cared for me to address. The main realization I came away with was how difficult it can be to sit through a movie when what's going on is not convincing.
The first signal that something might be awry comes with Tom Hanks' initial appearance. After having read a lot about the "dark side" of him that's revealed in this film, I was shocked to find a lack of anything powerful, ominous, or menacing about his presence. He mainly just looks nervous and uptight.
The story itself begins to ring untrue when Hanks' son, the morning after having witnessed a murder, sasses his parents and refuses to attend to his dirty dishes. Hanks and his wife quietly sit there, shooting each knowing glances that say, "Uh oh. Acting out. Wonder what's up here?" This may be a typical enough reaction for contemporary parents, but for 1931? None of the kids I grew up with in the **1950s** would have dared backsass their dads that way. Nor would any credible parents have allowed it--no matter how much they might also have inwardly wondered what was wrong. And for a mob enforcer to be doing this?
Hanks later returns home one evening to find his wife and one of his two sons shot to death in his home. The other son is still in the house--extremely vulnerable to a return attack, once the killer realizes he's hit the wrong boy. Hanks makes no immediate effort to get his surviving son out of the house, or otherwise protect him in any way. He simply sits boo-hooing in the hallway. The problem is not with the emotion itself, but with how he deals with it--in a way that rings jarringly false for a man who earns his living by winning life-and-death contests.
Shortly after the killing, Hanks' character approaches mob boss Frank Nitti for a job with his Chicago organization. Although he has no idea how he'll be received (he might be summarily killed), he immediately blurts out his need for vengeance. Is this how a powerful and streetwise man behaves in the company of cunning, devious, and ruthless killers?
Or consider the behavior of Hanks and his son in their car, on the run, out in farm country. They spot a diner, and Hanks pulls in. Although there's lots of graveled space in back of the diner, Hanks parks right up in front, putting his well-known car on display to the world.
Hanks next tries to convince his son that upcoming meals will be few and far between, so he ought to eat something--but calmly accepts his son's demurral. (He's a 1931 father, mind you, and he knows it will be important for their survival to eat when they can; but if he just told his son to eat something, apparently that might be imposing on his delicate feelings, or sense of independence, or whatever.)
Not only that, but Hanks agrees to let the boy sit reading by himself **out in the car,** where he can't even see him--but every passing driver can--all the while parked conspicuously in front of a diner, when killers are out scouring the countryside for him. (Hanks is hungry, but his son won't agree to go in. What's a father to do? The more protective options of bringing his son in with him or skipping his own meal apparently never occur to him.)
In another scene, following a harrowing brush with a contract killer, in which the boy won't even *duck* when his father tells him to--**while they're being shot at**--Hanks angrily informs his boy that he's got to "start listening" to him, because of all the scary things that people other than Dad might do, if the son keeps on disobeying. Here Hanks' true character is finally revealed. He's not an authority figure; he's not a strong protector; he's not even in any way effectual. He's just a late-1990s mommy-daddy, braying out contemporary "parenting" catchphrases (no doubt learned from his wife) in a Richard Simmons voice: "Now, Justin, stop that! Justin, I'm going to count to ten..."
It only gets worse. Not only is Hanks ineffectual at protecting his son from outsiders, he can't even protect him from himself. Hanks unburdens himself of all kinds of details about his work and plans--things that a child of his son's age absolutely does not need to know.
Somehow they manage to survive Hanks' passive feeling-centric ineffectuality, despite colossal blunders like failing to ensure that a gunman he's just shot is actually dead.
Partly this is because the other mobsters are just as absurdly ineffectual as Hanks is.
For example, an entire mob family's command structure is taken out at a place where they've made no provisions for security other than some old guy waiting outside in a car. They emerge from a building to find the driver dead--then just stand there passively, completely exposed and out in the open, thinking about it (or perhaps coming to grips with their feelings about it).
Hanks' ineffectuality and lack of basic judgment goes on to assume absolutely epic proportions as the movie reaches its climax. Among other things, he actually asks another guy's permission to *kill his son*--and is **surprised** when the answer is no.
All in all, Road to Perdition is an astonishingly unlikely beast: a gangster movie completely devoid of comprehension of what strong men are like, and a tale of fatherhood with no conception that it's possible to be something other than an ineffectual 1990s-style mommy-daddy. Because it is never anything more than a "new man's" groundless fantasy about what it would be like to be a gangster, it is no more convincing than a bad skit.
Most of the fault is obviously in the script, but it's disturbing that neither Tom Hanks nor Paul Newman nor director Sam Mercer noticed anything wrong with it.
Road to Perdition certainly got me thinking--but not about anything the filmmakers would likely have cared for me to address. The main realization I came away with was how difficult it can be to sit through a movie when what's going on is not convincing.
The first signal that something might be awry comes with Tom Hanks' initial appearance. After having read a lot about the "dark side" of him that's revealed in this film, I was shocked to find a lack of anything powerful, ominous, or menacing about his presence. He mainly just looks nervous and uptight.
The story itself begins to ring untrue when Hanks' son, the morning after having witnessed a murder, sasses his parents and refuses to attend to his dirty dishes. Hanks and his wife quietly sit there, shooting each knowing glances that say, "Uh oh. Acting out. Wonder what's up here?" This may be a typical enough reaction for contemporary parents, but for 1931? None of the kids I grew up with in the **1950s** would have dared backsass their dads that way. Nor would any credible parents have allowed it--no matter how much they might also have inwardly wondered what was wrong. And for a mob enforcer to be doing this?
Hanks later returns home one evening to find his wife and one of his two sons shot to death in his home. The other son is still in the house--extremely vulnerable to a return attack, once the killer realizes he's hit the wrong boy. Hanks makes no immediate effort to get his surviving son out of the house, or otherwise protect him in any way. He simply sits boo-hooing in the hallway. The problem is not with the emotion itself, but with how he deals with it--in a way that rings jarringly false for a man who earns his living by winning life-and-death contests.
Shortly after the killing, Hanks' character approaches mob boss Frank Nitti for a job with his Chicago organization. Although he has no idea how he'll be received (he might be summarily killed), he immediately blurts out his need for vengeance. Is this how a powerful and streetwise man behaves in the company of cunning, devious, and ruthless killers?
Or consider the behavior of Hanks and his son in their car, on the run, out in farm country. They spot a diner, and Hanks pulls in. Although there's lots of graveled space in back of the diner, Hanks parks right up in front, putting his well-known car on display to the world.
Hanks next tries to convince his son that upcoming meals will be few and far between, so he ought to eat something--but calmly accepts his son's demurral. (He's a 1931 father, mind you, and he knows it will be important for their survival to eat when they can; but if he just told his son to eat something, apparently that might be imposing on his delicate feelings, or sense of independence, or whatever.)
Not only that, but Hanks agrees to let the boy sit reading by himself **out in the car,** where he can't even see him--but every passing driver can--all the while parked conspicuously in front of a diner, when killers are out scouring the countryside for him. (Hanks is hungry, but his son won't agree to go in. What's a father to do? The more protective options of bringing his son in with him or skipping his own meal apparently never occur to him.)
In another scene, following a harrowing brush with a contract killer, in which the boy won't even *duck* when his father tells him to--**while they're being shot at**--Hanks angrily informs his boy that he's got to "start listening" to him, because of all the scary things that people other than Dad might do, if the son keeps on disobeying. Here Hanks' true character is finally revealed. He's not an authority figure; he's not a strong protector; he's not even in any way effectual. He's just a late-1990s mommy-daddy, braying out contemporary "parenting" catchphrases (no doubt learned from his wife) in a Richard Simmons voice: "Now, Justin, stop that! Justin, I'm going to count to ten..."
It only gets worse. Not only is Hanks ineffectual at protecting his son from outsiders, he can't even protect him from himself. Hanks unburdens himself of all kinds of details about his work and plans--things that a child of his son's age absolutely does not need to know.
Somehow they manage to survive Hanks' passive feeling-centric ineffectuality, despite colossal blunders like failing to ensure that a gunman he's just shot is actually dead.
Partly this is because the other mobsters are just as absurdly ineffectual as Hanks is.
For example, an entire mob family's command structure is taken out at a place where they've made no provisions for security other than some old guy waiting outside in a car. They emerge from a building to find the driver dead--then just stand there passively, completely exposed and out in the open, thinking about it (or perhaps coming to grips with their feelings about it).
Hanks' ineffectuality and lack of basic judgment goes on to assume absolutely epic proportions as the movie reaches its climax. Among other things, he actually asks another guy's permission to *kill his son*--and is **surprised** when the answer is no.
All in all, Road to Perdition is an astonishingly unlikely beast: a gangster movie completely devoid of comprehension of what strong men are like, and a tale of fatherhood with no conception that it's possible to be something other than an ineffectual 1990s-style mommy-daddy. Because it is never anything more than a "new man's" groundless fantasy about what it would be like to be a gangster, it is no more convincing than a bad skit.
Most of the fault is obviously in the script, but it's disturbing that neither Tom Hanks nor Paul Newman nor director Sam Mercer noticed anything wrong with it.