No miracle can save a film based on a bad script. An all-star cast may help its box-office opening, but will surely not add soul to a dead skeleton. Participation of an acting legend will add nothing other than diminish his own stature. A reputable editor will lack pieces for putting together an attractive mosaic. A hot-shot director can only do one thing with it - refuse to film it.
With mediocre screenplay the things will go from bad to worse. When a movie is mainly praised for its cinematography and its acting, its a smoking gun something's fishy. A producer attempting to film a flat script is on a creative suicide mission. It's somewhat like bluffing high stakes with a badly dealt hand.
Things are rotten in this sanctimonious depiction of 30's Irish mob. To be like my father or not to be? That is a puzzle confronting Michael Jr., a son of a dour mafia hit-man. Tom Hanks, emulating in turn Clint Eastwood's cool and Michael Madsen's brute, plays Micheal Sullivan, an enforcer for Chicago's alcohol mob boss John Rooney (Looney). The film is supposed to be about family and vengeance. About a mobster not wanting his son to follow in his father's footsteps. Hey, what about 'Godfather'? Couldn't Don Corleone's saga be titled, less imaginativly,
'Road to Perdition'. Isn't Perdition all Micheal Corlone has left at the end of the road? Choosing a theme and milieu for their movie identical to a recognized Hollywood landmark was certainly not a creative challenge for its producers (another father and son - the Zanucks). The monetary potentials of producing a popular graphic novel with expectations of a built-in teenage audience are more likely reason.
'Road to Perdition' has frustration and lameness leaking from all its sides. Its a downpour folks, take your umbrellas along! Hardly anything seems to work here. Mediocre opening and cheesy closing narration add insult to injury. Uninspired editing raises level of boredom to annoyance. No character development undermines credibility of relationships and caricatures some of its protagonists (Jude Law's Maguire, a psychotic hit man whom Capone's mob hires to take Sullivan out). An engaging yet unstoppable tidal wave of a musical score overwhelms nearly every scene, to an extent that, by the end of the movie, you wish you had a remote in your hand to turn the damn music off. Inconsistencies in plot twists and characterization demand unreasonable suspension of disbelief (Sullivan and Rooney together on a piano - come on, what is this, a period French costume drama!?). The film's major story thrust is in defiance with logic and gangster etiquette. (Connor, Rooneys son, decides to protect himself by exterminating Sullivan's wife and a kid!? It is quite unlikely that even a psycho would think Sullivan's son would blow the whistle on his own father.). Director's slippery thematic grasp muddles already turbulent waters. Infusing protagonists' interplay with late twenties sensitivities is another fatal flaw.
Proclaiming Sam Mandes an interesting director after his 'American Beauty' turns out a bit too premature.
A sampling of the hype bestowed on the movie is revealing of the corrupted state of mainstream movie criticism. Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times praises the movie as "resonant story with the potent, unrelenting fatalism of a previously unknown Greek myth".
New York Times Stephen Holden: "a period gangster film that achieves the grandeur of a classic Hollywood western". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone Magazine says the movie "...reveals something elemental about fathers and sons and the bloodlust that seems hard-wired into the American character...the passion and precision of 'Road to Perdition' is staggering".
One can't help but feel they all sound a little like corrupted Wall Street investment analysts praising WorldCom or Enron stocks right before their catastrophic collapse.
With mediocre screenplay the things will go from bad to worse. When a movie is mainly praised for its cinematography and its acting, its a smoking gun something's fishy. A producer attempting to film a flat script is on a creative suicide mission. It's somewhat like bluffing high stakes with a badly dealt hand.
Things are rotten in this sanctimonious depiction of 30's Irish mob. To be like my father or not to be? That is a puzzle confronting Michael Jr., a son of a dour mafia hit-man. Tom Hanks, emulating in turn Clint Eastwood's cool and Michael Madsen's brute, plays Micheal Sullivan, an enforcer for Chicago's alcohol mob boss John Rooney (Looney). The film is supposed to be about family and vengeance. About a mobster not wanting his son to follow in his father's footsteps. Hey, what about 'Godfather'? Couldn't Don Corleone's saga be titled, less imaginativly,
'Road to Perdition'. Isn't Perdition all Micheal Corlone has left at the end of the road? Choosing a theme and milieu for their movie identical to a recognized Hollywood landmark was certainly not a creative challenge for its producers (another father and son - the Zanucks). The monetary potentials of producing a popular graphic novel with expectations of a built-in teenage audience are more likely reason.
'Road to Perdition' has frustration and lameness leaking from all its sides. Its a downpour folks, take your umbrellas along! Hardly anything seems to work here. Mediocre opening and cheesy closing narration add insult to injury. Uninspired editing raises level of boredom to annoyance. No character development undermines credibility of relationships and caricatures some of its protagonists (Jude Law's Maguire, a psychotic hit man whom Capone's mob hires to take Sullivan out). An engaging yet unstoppable tidal wave of a musical score overwhelms nearly every scene, to an extent that, by the end of the movie, you wish you had a remote in your hand to turn the damn music off. Inconsistencies in plot twists and characterization demand unreasonable suspension of disbelief (Sullivan and Rooney together on a piano - come on, what is this, a period French costume drama!?). The film's major story thrust is in defiance with logic and gangster etiquette. (Connor, Rooneys son, decides to protect himself by exterminating Sullivan's wife and a kid!? It is quite unlikely that even a psycho would think Sullivan's son would blow the whistle on his own father.). Director's slippery thematic grasp muddles already turbulent waters. Infusing protagonists' interplay with late twenties sensitivities is another fatal flaw.
Proclaiming Sam Mandes an interesting director after his 'American Beauty' turns out a bit too premature.
A sampling of the hype bestowed on the movie is revealing of the corrupted state of mainstream movie criticism. Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times praises the movie as "resonant story with the potent, unrelenting fatalism of a previously unknown Greek myth".
New York Times Stephen Holden: "a period gangster film that achieves the grandeur of a classic Hollywood western". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone Magazine says the movie "...reveals something elemental about fathers and sons and the bloodlust that seems hard-wired into the American character...the passion and precision of 'Road to Perdition' is staggering".
One can't help but feel they all sound a little like corrupted Wall Street investment analysts praising WorldCom or Enron stocks right before their catastrophic collapse.