Road to Perdition
Sam Mendes, Director

Review by Rada Djurica

The director of "Road to Prediction," Sam Mendes, hasn't made another masterpiece to equal his debut, "American Beauty," at least not yet.

Yes, "Road to Prediction" is very ambitious piece of work. Everybody gathers that. And if you just take a look at the cast: Jude Law, Tom Hanks, Paul Newman...

This is the adaptation of the Max Allan Collins novel, where Tom Hanks performs in the role of Michael Sullivan, a hit man in Chicago during the Depression year of 1931.

However, this is how the film goes:

A little boy finds out that his beloved father is a professional hit man. Their life changes when his boss turns against him, killing his other son and wife. So Sullivan and his son spend time on the road, on the run. They are hunted by the real animal, a professional hitman photographer, Maguire (Jude Law).

"Road to Perdition" may be a gangster movie, or a drama, it is not very clear. If it's a drama, it is an unusual drama. Michael is a criminal, he has killed, not innocent people, but he still have a lots on his sinful soul. And yet, this is a story about a man who is a hero to his son. Life is never black and white; bad people have good and certainly good people have bad inside. Which one is going to win depends of the life circumstances. And there he is, Michael Sullivan, insisting that his son never follows the road that he took for himself in life.

I think that relationship between son and the father is well portrayed. While the movie may be over-directed, the two main actors keep it all on the ground and inside the lines. Hanks effectively and genuinely shows us that Sullivan knows he's a man whose soul is beyond saving, but still thinks he has a chance to save his son's.

The hit man who is after them is perfect cold blood murderer, a twisted killer (Jude Law) that never, not once, falls out of character, or overacts it, which is usual for parts like this. There are few remarkable scenes as well as a most effective one, in a diner where the hit man, Maguire, gets into a conversation with Sullivan, telling him what is going to happen to him. And the idea of the perfect twisted mind of Maguire shows in the scenes when he takes pictures of freshly killed people. And as I said of Law, his acting is faultless.

Newman manages to project a character of great strength and outward control.

There is a third relationship of this nature as well, an implicit father-son bond between Michael Sullivan and John Rooney (Paul Newman), the man who "saved" Sullivan's life during the American Great Depression, giving him a house and money, and treating him as he were his own son.

"Road to Perdition" rediscovers the classic world of the American gangster, and the film is a profound examination of fathers and sons, told with complexity. For Hanks, that was clearly what actually attracted him to the project.