CMJ
Jun 19th, 2002, 08:28:40 AM
Yes we all hate Jeff Welles, but I wanted to post his thoughts on "Perdition" because it's really the first review I've seen so far....
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The talk this week is all about Minority Report (20th Century Fox, opening Friday), which many are calling one of Spielberg's best. But I'm feeling closer to and more admiring of Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition (DreamWorks, July 12), a beautifully measured and proportioned gangster drama I saw Monday afternoon. I think it's a brilliant mainstream art film, an echo-laden father-son relationship drama, an exquisitely filmed and designed slice of 1930s Americana, and a wonderfully spare work of cinematic poetry.
That's a mouthful, I realize. But I love this film, and I want to take this opportunity to wipe away any impressions I may have given in previous columns — which I wrote early last year (or was it the year before?) after reading a couple of early drafts of David Self's script — that it contains an attempt by Tom Hanks to soft-pedal his gangster-dad character, which he definitely does not. Or that it's somehow less of a film than Mendes' American Beauty. It's a different bird, all right, but anyone who compares Road to Perdition unfavorably with that 1999 Best Picture winner is simply missing (or dismissing) the value of it.
It's obvious after the opening two or three minutes that each and every aspect of Road to Perdition is pure quality and pure class. Remarkable care, precision and pictorial beauty have clearly gone into every frame. There may be some who will call it a bit precious or pretentious, but it won't matter. I believe I know the difference between films trying to get by on art-house brush strokes and shrewdly crafted films that place a high premium on connecting each and every dot, and this is one of the latter.
Year-end Academy prejudices against summer releases aside, Road to Perdition is a clear candidate for Best Picture, Best Director (Mendes), Best Actor (Hanks), Best Supporting Actor (Jude Law, whose somewhat gimpy, oddly dressed hitman/photographer character is as much a visual treat as a performing one), Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall), Best Adapted Screenplay (Self), Best Production Design (Dennis Gassner's period trappings are a movie in themselves), Best Editing (Jill Bilcock) and Best Original Score (Thomas Newman, whose brilliant American Beauty score was Oscar-nominated), to name but a few.
As most of you probably know, Road to Perdition is about a gruff Chicago assassin named Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) trying to save himself and his son, Michael Jr. (played by an arresting newcomer named Tyler Hoechlin) from brutal death by forces within the Al Capone-led Chicago mob, who have already murdered his wife and younger son. Paul Newman plays a craggy old Irish mob boss named John Rooney, whose son, Connor (Daniel Craig), a hair-trigger psychopath fallen far from the tree, is the cause of the elder Sullivan's troubles. Self's script is based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner.
The story isn't the greatest ever concocted (it's got some loose ends here and there) but it eventually settles in to a meditation about the legacies left to sons by their fathers, with the focus not just on the two Michaels but also the tragic synergy between the Rooneys. On one level the movie says that a father and son who rob and kill together are definitely going to get to know each other in ways that fathers and sons who play catch and go on picnics together are going to miss out on. On another level it reminds us that sons disturb their fathers like no other force on earth.
I liked Self's script, but the movie is much better, partly because so much of the dialogue has been pruned down. The main reason Road to Perdition wasn't ready to go out in late '01, I've been told, is that the honing process hadn't been completed. The extra time and effort was worth it. It now runs a very tight and true 119 minutes. If there was ever a film that proved less is more or that careful editing can really count, this is it.
(The editing did produce a casualty, however. Anthony La Paglia's Al Capone character, which I was looking forward to seeing, has been completely excised.)
I've heard grousings from exhibition sources who fear audiences won't support Road to Perdition as much as they or DreamWorks would like, possibly because mainstreamers might not like watching Saint Tom play a hit man. I can only throw up my hands when I hear stuff like this. The movie, after all, delivers and Hanks is quite good. It seems shallow to presume that audiences are only interested in "up" confections and will reject quality material just because it's occasionally violent and has a somber emotional quality.
The idea of Hanks as a quasi-bad guy might throw some people, but he invests Michael Sullivan with rivers of choked-off, unexpressed feeling. Maybe Hanks' reputation as a reservoir of decency and likability is too potent for this character to seem truly malevolent or murderous. I found his acting fascinating because of this tension; it's almost a revelation. I totally believed in his fearsomeness. I loved the taciturn, marvelously measured way he speaks each and every line. Hanks lets in emotions and moods I've been waiting to see him make the acquaintance of for a long while.
Conrad Hall's cinematography is drop-dead beautiful in a grayish, almost monochromatic way, contrasting sharply with the luminous colors he used for American Beauty, for which he won an Oscar. It's true what I heard about this movie being drenched in rain. It makes you feel damp just watching it.
The violence in Road to Perdition is extremely vivid and jarring. (My sons Dylan and Jett, now 12 and 14, were especially impressed by this aspect.) There are several shootout scenes, and each is not only thrilling on its own terms but done in a way we've never quite seen before. The first is filmed entirely from the viewpoint of the younger Michael, spying on his dad as he executes a victim and eyeballing everything from a small cranny hole near the floor. There's another gangland rubout scene that happens without a single gunshot on the soundtrack. We're shown nothing in an early scene in which two innocents are murdered, but the sound alone is terrifying. Time and again, Mendes always goes for the oblique or unusual approach.
It's extremely gratifying that two intelligent, first-rate films — this and Minority Report (which I'll get into with Friday's column) — are here to counter-program the mid-summer moron trade. This is turning out to be a pretty good warm-weather season. Here's hoping Eight Legged Freaks is another score.
*********************************
The talk this week is all about Minority Report (20th Century Fox, opening Friday), which many are calling one of Spielberg's best. But I'm feeling closer to and more admiring of Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition (DreamWorks, July 12), a beautifully measured and proportioned gangster drama I saw Monday afternoon. I think it's a brilliant mainstream art film, an echo-laden father-son relationship drama, an exquisitely filmed and designed slice of 1930s Americana, and a wonderfully spare work of cinematic poetry.
That's a mouthful, I realize. But I love this film, and I want to take this opportunity to wipe away any impressions I may have given in previous columns — which I wrote early last year (or was it the year before?) after reading a couple of early drafts of David Self's script — that it contains an attempt by Tom Hanks to soft-pedal his gangster-dad character, which he definitely does not. Or that it's somehow less of a film than Mendes' American Beauty. It's a different bird, all right, but anyone who compares Road to Perdition unfavorably with that 1999 Best Picture winner is simply missing (or dismissing) the value of it.
It's obvious after the opening two or three minutes that each and every aspect of Road to Perdition is pure quality and pure class. Remarkable care, precision and pictorial beauty have clearly gone into every frame. There may be some who will call it a bit precious or pretentious, but it won't matter. I believe I know the difference between films trying to get by on art-house brush strokes and shrewdly crafted films that place a high premium on connecting each and every dot, and this is one of the latter.
Year-end Academy prejudices against summer releases aside, Road to Perdition is a clear candidate for Best Picture, Best Director (Mendes), Best Actor (Hanks), Best Supporting Actor (Jude Law, whose somewhat gimpy, oddly dressed hitman/photographer character is as much a visual treat as a performing one), Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall), Best Adapted Screenplay (Self), Best Production Design (Dennis Gassner's period trappings are a movie in themselves), Best Editing (Jill Bilcock) and Best Original Score (Thomas Newman, whose brilliant American Beauty score was Oscar-nominated), to name but a few.
As most of you probably know, Road to Perdition is about a gruff Chicago assassin named Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) trying to save himself and his son, Michael Jr. (played by an arresting newcomer named Tyler Hoechlin) from brutal death by forces within the Al Capone-led Chicago mob, who have already murdered his wife and younger son. Paul Newman plays a craggy old Irish mob boss named John Rooney, whose son, Connor (Daniel Craig), a hair-trigger psychopath fallen far from the tree, is the cause of the elder Sullivan's troubles. Self's script is based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner.
The story isn't the greatest ever concocted (it's got some loose ends here and there) but it eventually settles in to a meditation about the legacies left to sons by their fathers, with the focus not just on the two Michaels but also the tragic synergy between the Rooneys. On one level the movie says that a father and son who rob and kill together are definitely going to get to know each other in ways that fathers and sons who play catch and go on picnics together are going to miss out on. On another level it reminds us that sons disturb their fathers like no other force on earth.
I liked Self's script, but the movie is much better, partly because so much of the dialogue has been pruned down. The main reason Road to Perdition wasn't ready to go out in late '01, I've been told, is that the honing process hadn't been completed. The extra time and effort was worth it. It now runs a very tight and true 119 minutes. If there was ever a film that proved less is more or that careful editing can really count, this is it.
(The editing did produce a casualty, however. Anthony La Paglia's Al Capone character, which I was looking forward to seeing, has been completely excised.)
I've heard grousings from exhibition sources who fear audiences won't support Road to Perdition as much as they or DreamWorks would like, possibly because mainstreamers might not like watching Saint Tom play a hit man. I can only throw up my hands when I hear stuff like this. The movie, after all, delivers and Hanks is quite good. It seems shallow to presume that audiences are only interested in "up" confections and will reject quality material just because it's occasionally violent and has a somber emotional quality.
The idea of Hanks as a quasi-bad guy might throw some people, but he invests Michael Sullivan with rivers of choked-off, unexpressed feeling. Maybe Hanks' reputation as a reservoir of decency and likability is too potent for this character to seem truly malevolent or murderous. I found his acting fascinating because of this tension; it's almost a revelation. I totally believed in his fearsomeness. I loved the taciturn, marvelously measured way he speaks each and every line. Hanks lets in emotions and moods I've been waiting to see him make the acquaintance of for a long while.
Conrad Hall's cinematography is drop-dead beautiful in a grayish, almost monochromatic way, contrasting sharply with the luminous colors he used for American Beauty, for which he won an Oscar. It's true what I heard about this movie being drenched in rain. It makes you feel damp just watching it.
The violence in Road to Perdition is extremely vivid and jarring. (My sons Dylan and Jett, now 12 and 14, were especially impressed by this aspect.) There are several shootout scenes, and each is not only thrilling on its own terms but done in a way we've never quite seen before. The first is filmed entirely from the viewpoint of the younger Michael, spying on his dad as he executes a victim and eyeballing everything from a small cranny hole near the floor. There's another gangland rubout scene that happens without a single gunshot on the soundtrack. We're shown nothing in an early scene in which two innocents are murdered, but the sound alone is terrifying. Time and again, Mendes always goes for the oblique or unusual approach.
It's extremely gratifying that two intelligent, first-rate films — this and Minority Report (which I'll get into with Friday's column) — are here to counter-program the mid-summer moron trade. This is turning out to be a pretty good warm-weather season. Here's hoping Eight Legged Freaks is another score.