Good Intentions

Movie: The Road to Perdition
Director: Sam Mendes

By: Carly Berard (Lawrencerock.com Movie Editor)

Perdition stars Tom Hanks (now with 20% more mustache!) as -brace yourself America- a morally suspect henchman for an Irish crime family, named Michael Sullivan. Hanks costars with Paul Newman as John Rooney, the local crime boss and Sullivan’s surrogate father, and newcomer Tyler Hoechlin as Michael Jr. Jude Law, Stanley Tucci and Daniel Craig support as a nefarious photographer/assassin, Chicago crime captain and Rooney’s psychotic son, respectively. Oh wait, I almost forgot Jennifer Jason Leigh, but she’s hardly worth mentioning seeing as how she only has THREE LINES. Really, it’s insulting to underutilize an actress of this caliber and I don’t know why she’s even in this film except that I do and it’s because she and director Sam Mendes are old friends seeing as how he directed her in his much acclaimed revival of Cabaret on Broadway, but on that score I have to ask where is Alan Cumming’s bit part? Couldn’t he have played a creepy undertaker or something?

This film tries very hard to be Moving and Important but is dragged down with both fists by its improbable plot. Wondering what his daddy does all day, young Michael stows away one night to watch is father in action and witnesses Mike Sr. and Rooney Jr. taking care of business. The men find out what the boy has seen thus setting in motion a series of events that will come to dramatically affect the lives of each of the characters in this film...but why? Is Mike Jr.’s knowledge really that much of a threat? If some bodies are found laced with machine gun bullets is it really so much of a stretch suspect THE LOCAL CRIME FAMILY had a hand in it? Then when Mike and baby Mike take to the road on a mission of holy vengeance with the mob on their tail Dad decides there’s only one thing to do: start robbin’ banks! Wuh? I wanted so much to like this movie but I just couldn’t and it’s because I do not buy the premise of the first and second acts, not for one single second.

And it’s easy to want to make excuses for this film because it looks so pretty and it sounds so nice. Thanks to the great skill of cinematographer Conrad L. Hall and the haunting score by Thomas (Shawshank Redemption) Newman this film is wrapped in a package far more beautiful than its contents. The last time Hall worked with Mendes on American Beauty he won an Oscar and it’s certainly easy to see why. Hall evokes a grim world of grays and greens and shadows and then drenches them with near constant rainfall, brilliantly underscoring the film’s weary fatalism. Hall also does a lot of interesting things with light in this film, many of which call up his past triumph, In Cold Blood. Listening to Mendes on the commentary track of ‘Beauty gleefully venerating Hall’s every move, I know, just know he went all Chris Farely fanboy, “’member that time in In Cold Blood when it’s raining outside but the light’s shining through the window and it looks like it’s raining on the killer’s face?? That was awesome!” and got Hall to do it here. A hundred times. It’s a great shot to see rainfall projected on the actors faces or on the ceiling of the boy’s bedroom and certainly speaks to the weeping of Hank’s soul or whatever but it starts to get redundant...and a little too showy. If any other DP had done this I’d call it wonderful and say it was a Hall homage but because the creator himself is falling back on his old tricks and then flogging them it comes off as self-indulgent. Hall should be innovating, not living in the past although I’m sure Sam is the one to blame. One quote I really liked was the Citizen Kane nod in the film’s opening when Michael and his brother are playing in the snow, and then again when the camera focuses on Mike’s bicycle dramatically falling to the ground like Rosebud when he leaves his home (and his childhood) behind. It’s a nice visual cue that the rising action has commenced and CK is a work that can’t get alluded to enough.

The acting, also...for the most part...lives up to the camerawork. Paul Newman is excellent in his role as the paternal crime boss, at once kindly and sinister. He’s given the best lines and I think gives the best performance, evincing both a somber determination and austere resignation to the consequences of the life he’s lead. The kid’s alright. He emotes on cue and holds his own with his more experienced peers and I think soundly portrays Michael’s loss of innocence/ coming of age. The supporters all acquit themselves quite nicely and I’ve never taken note of Daniel Craig before but he is utterly convincing as Newman’s bitterly jealous, slightly unhinged biological son. Jude Law also seems to relish this opportunity to be cast against type, playing his weirdo hit man as creepy as creepy can be. Who haven’t I mentioned yet...who else is in…oh riiiight, Tom Hanks. I don’t know what to make of this performance, I really don’t. At times Hanks manages to project Sullivan’s brooding inner conflict but this is mostly accomplished by not saying anything and standing in some shadows courtesy of Hall. At other times he seems to break character with a vintage Hanksian line reading, calling up his Sleepless in Seattle days which really don’t play here. He’s not bad of course, but I don’t quite buy it and what’s more, I don’t appreciate the effort.

Let the record show that I am not charmed by this man. You may be America’s sweetheart, Hanks, but you’re not mine. Since Philadelphia, which -yes- was a great performance he’s just had this attitude about him...this “bow citizens, for it is I, TOM HANKS: MOST DECENT MAN IN AMERICA and now I shall chasten you for not building a WWII memorial in Washington” air of self-righteous superiority that I’m not a fan of. Like the space program and WWII actually did exist before you made a movie and co-produced an HBO mini-series about them, Oh Great Educator so go park your high horse out in the pasture next to those Bosom Buddies tapes you don’t want anyone to see and check your ‘tude at the door. Why can’t Tom Hanks make comedies anymore? Why America??

Why has he insisted in the latter half of his career on only playing Noble Men? A noble lawyer afflicted with AIDS, a noble generation chronicler afflicted with low IQ, a noble astronaut afflicted with faulty spacecraft, a noble captain afflicted with WWII, a noble prison guard afflicted with weirdly spiritual Michael Clark Duncan, a noble Fed Ex employee afflicted with tropical island and now, finally, this: a noble gangster afflicted with parental duty. Even your killers have to be Decent?? Are comedies so far beneath you now? How about a Splash II? Or a Big Again? The Bride of Dragnet? The ‘Burbs Strike Back? Revenge of the Moneypit? Punchline Part Deux? Turner & Hooch: Judgement Day? Bachelor Party: the Partying??? How ‘bout if you milk that Hepburn-Tracy thing you’ve got going on with Meg Ryan? God. I’m desperate. And I’ll take anything because the seriousness and the self-importance and the smugness have worn me clean out. Lighten. UP

And just what the Sam Hill is going on down at Dreamworks that this film got a July release? People! You don’t go Oscar-baiting in the middle of the damn summer, not with a movie like this. Perdition was originally slated for a November ’01 release but the powers that be wisely yanked it so it wouldn’t get in the way of SKG’s other award hopeful, A Beautiful Mind. That was a smart move but this just seems like Dreamworks doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the film. And the Oscar mongering this time around strikes me as a little half-assed, there’s just no feeling in it and dumping it in July mere weeks after releasing a Certain Other period film about a son-avenging dad on the run at odds with his shady father figure staring SOMEONE NAMED TOM doesn’t speak well about the studio’s faith in the film. But…they’re right to feel this way. All the Newman acting and lovely scoring and Vertigo-esque behind the head tracking shots in the world can’t save it. I like Mendes, a lot, and I know he will go on to do great things and I know your sophomore effort gets saddled with a helluva lot of expectations when you hit a homerun your first time out but there’s no getting around the ground-roll doubleness of this film. It’s a nice try, a good effort but does it get the job done? No way in Perdition.