The last few days of my life have been fairly joyous with my return to University and the monolothically satisfying moment of handing in an inordinate amount of coursework which I invested more time than I care to mention completing. I nearly wept with over my celebratory pint of beer with happiness, serious stuff. To add to the frivolities I thought going to see The Road would be a good idea. I was wrong.
I expected The Road to be a very good film for several fairly well founded reasons; 1.) It is directed by John Hillcoat who was responsible for the superb Australian set neo-Western The Proposition which I can only recommend very highly, 2.) Viggo Mortensen and Rubert Du'fuckin'vall star in it-two very competent and accomplished actors, 3.) It is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's book with the same title which won the Pulitzer Prize. You would think that these reasons would create the foundations for what could be a very good watch. I am still fairly dumbfounded as to how they managed to screw something that could have been so good up to such an extent.
The Road opens fairly promisingly with a flashback to life before some kind of un described Apocalyptic event. Viggo also has an incredible moustache in this sequence which wetted my thirsty pallet for facial hair, I hoped the hair would get more and more impressive as the film commensed but frankly the beards were a big let down. Moving on- after we see this brief flashback the film cuts to the 'present' where all living creatures except for humans have been killed and the planet is slowly but surely dying and what's left of humanity limps onwards struggling for survival. The whole post-apocalyptic wasteland has been done to absolute death recently but I was ready to accept the concept in this film because of the superior Directing force, the critically acclaimed novel it was based on and the heavy weight acting talent contained within it. Sadly the film did absolutely nothing interesting with the representation of this wasteland. The crux of the film is basically that Viggo and his son are really hungry and are scared of getting eaten by people who have turned to cannibalism. The diegesis does not develop beyond this really at any point in the film. This makes for a very boring watch because the plot essentially runs within this structure: Watch viggo and his son walk somewhere, sleep there and complain about being hungry-watch them wake up and do the same the next day-insert a very inconsequentially suspensful scene where they come in close ocntact with cannibals or 'the bad guys' as the child in the film cringingly refers to them-watch them walk more and complain about being hungry more. BORING.
The locations in the film do admittedly look absolutely stunning and you really to get a strong impression of this vast, barren world the protagonists are struggling through. This is really the only compliment that I can bestow upon this film. The 'action' sequences where father and child narrowly escape capture/cooking from cannibals are not exciting or tense with the exception of one very unpleasent scene in a basement. I think one of the key problems with the narrative of this film is that it sits in an awkward limbo between being a post-apocalyptic action/horror e.g. 28 Days Later and a post-apocalyptic drama. It fails at being either by virture of the awkward contrast between what the two would aim to accomplish. The Road tries to be both exciting and emotive and fails embarrassingly at accomplishing either-at no point did I feel tense/excited or moved by the events that unfolded before the characters because I was so disengaged with them due to how boring they were. They do nothing but winge and look dishevelled for the duration of the film. The child actor in the film is really bad as well which does not help matters.
The most irritating thing about this film is the unashamed use of product placement. It is absolutely shocking how unsubtle it is, arguably as bad as the advertisement for Converse All Stars in I, robot. If you watch the trailer for this film you already get an impression of how vicious the product placement is with the young boy drinking a Coca-Cola can. This moment is made even more repulsively sacharrine by the presentation of the father and son bonding over the delicious taste of the 'bubbly' Coca-Cola. Just Dreadful. Rather oddly another key player in the product placement game is Del Monte-yes, Del Monte the fruit company. It is just bizarre how often you see them eating fruit cans with what is essentially a close-up of the Del Monte label. I would never have predicted that a tinned fruit company would have featured so heavily in a fairly big budget Hollywood production-fair play really. Jack Daniels Whiskey also acts as a leading player in the product placement paralympics. It is almost worth watching the film just to pick up on these moments which had my friend and I openly laughing in baffled bemusement, rather worryingly the audience didn't seem to pick up on this blatent advertising.
Anyway, as you can see I did not like this film. I would not recommend it to anyone, if you want to go to the cinema either wait for Up In the Air, 44 inch Chest or just go and see Avatar again. /rant.
The Road opens fairly promisingly with a flashback to life before some kind of un described Apocalyptic event. Viggo also has an incredible moustache in this sequence which wetted my thirsty pallet for facial hair, I hoped the hair would get more and more impressive as the film commensed but frankly the beards were a big let down. Moving on- after we see this brief flashback the film cuts to the 'present' where all living creatures except for humans have been killed and the planet is slowly but surely dying and what's left of humanity limps onwards struggling for survival. The whole post-apocalyptic wasteland has been done to absolute death recently but I was ready to accept the concept in this film because of the superior Directing force, the critically acclaimed novel it was based on and the heavy weight acting talent contained within it. Sadly the film did absolutely nothing interesting with the representation of this wasteland. The crux of the film is basically that Viggo and his son are really hungry and are scared of getting eaten by people who have turned to cannibalism. The diegesis does not develop beyond this really at any point in the film. This makes for a very boring watch because the plot essentially runs within this structure: Watch viggo and his son walk somewhere, sleep there and complain about being hungry-watch them wake up and do the same the next day-insert a very inconsequentially suspensful scene where they come in close ocntact with cannibals or 'the bad guys' as the child in the film cringingly refers to them-watch them walk more and complain about being hungry more. BORING.
The locations in the film do admittedly look absolutely stunning and you really to get a strong impression of this vast, barren world the protagonists are struggling through. This is really the only compliment that I can bestow upon this film. The 'action' sequences where father and child narrowly escape capture/cooking from cannibals are not exciting or tense with the exception of one very unpleasent scene in a basement. I think one of the key problems with the narrative of this film is that it sits in an awkward limbo between being a post-apocalyptic action/horror e.g. 28 Days Later and a post-apocalyptic drama. It fails at being either by virture of the awkward contrast between what the two would aim to accomplish. The Road tries to be both exciting and emotive and fails embarrassingly at accomplishing either-at no point did I feel tense/excited or moved by the events that unfolded before the characters because I was so disengaged with them due to how boring they were. They do nothing but winge and look dishevelled for the duration of the film. The child actor in the film is really bad as well which does not help matters.
The most irritating thing about this film is the unashamed use of product placement. It is absolutely shocking how unsubtle it is, arguably as bad as the advertisement for Converse All Stars in I, robot. If you watch the trailer for this film you already get an impression of how vicious the product placement is with the young boy drinking a Coca-Cola can. This moment is made even more repulsively sacharrine by the presentation of the father and son bonding over the delicious taste of the 'bubbly' Coca-Cola. Just Dreadful. Rather oddly another key player in the product placement game is Del Monte-yes, Del Monte the fruit company. It is just bizarre how often you see them eating fruit cans with what is essentially a close-up of the Del Monte label. I would never have predicted that a tinned fruit company would have featured so heavily in a fairly big budget Hollywood production-fair play really. Jack Daniels Whiskey also acts as a leading player in the product placement paralympics. It is almost worth watching the film just to pick up on these moments which had my friend and I openly laughing in baffled bemusement, rather worryingly the audience didn't seem to pick up on this blatent advertising.
Anyway, as you can see I did not like this film. I would not recommend it to anyone, if you want to go to the cinema either wait for Up In the Air, 44 inch Chest or just go and see Avatar again. /rant.
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