My Amazon DVD Reviews: "The Road"

This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper  
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Like a modern day "On The Beach," the movie version of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" takes a grisly look at the world nearly a decade after some sort of catastrophic event has turned it into a barren wasteland with what few survivors left battling for survival. Unlike "On The Beach," however, you get no real sense that anyone wants to pull together, or that small communities have formed to weather the end times. Obviously, some have checked out rather than even try. Instead, "Papa" (a desolately believable Viggo Mortensen) and "boy" (a spookily innocent Kodi Smit-McPhee) are trying to make their way to the ocean in hopes that maybe the climate will be safer and warmer.

You're never given a reason why the world is dying; was there a nuclear winter? Did some sort of space detritus strike the earth ala the dinosaur extinction event? Did all those Fox News Climate Change deniers get a really nasty wakeup call? Did something happen to the Teutonic plates to cause these earthquakes and eruptions? You don't know; you only know that Papa and boy are wandering a barren planet where the only other life you see is a solitary beetle. Oh yeah, and gangs of murderous cannibal survivalists. It's up to Papa to keep boy safe, and guide him through the drifting ashes and burning landscape.

Along the way we meet the occasional other survivors that don't want to eat you, including a scene stealing Robert Duvall, who tests the father and son's humanity, and a thief who breaks Papa's resolve. While a couple of the scenes seem forced (seeing the hunters run down a woman for killing makes no sense...if there's any chance for survival, reproduction would seem to be a priority, wouldn't it?), but for the most part, the 'every man for yourself' scenarios seem too close for comfort. With the world dying a slow death (boy's birth in the early portion of the movie puts the timeline about 8 to 10 years into the post-apocalypse), how generous would you be? Who would you trust? "The Road" answers resoundingly, not very much. Not too many. This is a movie whose images will haunt after the disc leaves the player.