The Road

Based on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Road" is a post-apocalyptic tale of a father and son's struggle for survival and struggle to retain their humanity in a world no longer suitable for human life. They are refugees attempting to a make their way across an American landscape irrevocably scarred by some unnamed catastrophe. Lingering ash fills the air. It is cold. Not even the sun's rays can penetrate this harsh gray world. The two are headed south towards the coast in hopes of finding something slightly resembling civilization. What they encounter along the way is a land now populated by bandits, cannibals and butchered human beings.

The film does not attempt to make McCarthy's brutal dystopian vision any more palatable for audiences. Instead, director John Hillcoat's adaptation faces the utter desperation of the father and son head-on.

Mortensen gives a startling performance as the father, and Theron plays his wife in colorful flashbacks to his previous - normal - life. Nick Cave's sparse score is a delicate auditory compliment to the film's muted realism.
MAX SMITH