The Road

First Hit: A very dark story about what it might be like if we keep heading down the road we’re on.

The world, as we know it, has ended and a few people are alive. We don’t know what ended the world; it could have been war but mostly it looks like a disaster of some sort hit our planet. The mood is dark and stays dark throughout most of the film.

The characters don’t have names and Viggo Mortensen plays the man, Kodi Smit-McPhee plays the boy, and Charlize Theron plays the woman. Through dream flashbacks you learn that the woman, somewhat regretfully, has a child during our planet's deterioration.

She is strong and doesn’t want to live this long slow painful death she sees for the remaining humans. She chooses death. The man believes he must live on with the boy so they travel South looking for warmer weather.

They run into gangs of people who kill and eat strangers and it is clear that women and children are the prized killings and first to be eaten. The man and boy survive these tribulations as they move South and towards the ocean.

The boy is naïve and yet wise and guides his father towards kindness when possible. They run into one old man on the road played by Robert Duvall and befriend him for a couple of days. This is a dark story with small nuggets of kindness here and there.

Mortensen is intense as the man and is very good in this part. He was an excellent choice for this part. Smit-McPhee is sweet and looks as if he could have been Theron’s son (I’m sure he was picked for this part because of the resemblance). Duvall is wonderful for is portrayal of the old man who has most, but not all, of his marbles left. The constant darkness of this film both in color and texture of the scenes is powerful. A scene showing humans being stored and harvested for their meat is tough to watch. There are a handful of scenes in dream sequences where Theron and Mortensen are young lovers when the world was still hopeful and these scenes bring some light colors to the screen but those scenes are few and far between.

Overall: Make no mistake; if you don’t like dark foreboding films then don’t go to see this. However, it is a story that could be telling of our future if we’re not careful.

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