Stuck Inside #4: Road to Perdition

I normally opt for essays rather than reviews when writing about film, but during this indefinite period of isolation, I thought I’d use the abundance of time to write some capsule reviews of films I’m long overdue for watching.

Back in the twilight of the VHS-era, I was a young boy who would watch a number of movies from grandmother’s extensive VHs collection. And on a number of these before the feature, there would be a trailer for Road to Perdition. And from my perspective as a child, not even 10 years old yet, Road to Perdition seemed like a very dour, sad, boring movie about Tom Hanks standing in the rain. There were multiple instances in the trailer (and the movie, it turns out) of Tom Hanks standing in a trenchcoat in the rain. And I always wondered “who the fuck would place the trailer for Road to Perdition in front of a kids movie?” Perhaps this is why I never watched the movie, because I always associated it with it being the antithesis of everything I wanted to be watching as a kid. I never even looked into it, because all I remembered was a sad Tom Hanks. I didn’t know any of the other actors back then. I didn’t know Paul Newman. I didn’t know Daniel Craig. I certainly didn’t know Ciaran Hinds. If only someone had told me that this heavy period drama that I was so dead set against briefly transforms midway through into a father-son buddy heist comedy, I would have watched this movie years ago.

What works about Road to Perdition is it doesn’t pull any punches. I’ve seen a number of movies and read a number of stories of this ilk that hold back from the inevitably ugly outcomes these stories tend to produce. When Jude Law shoots Tom Hanks through the chest as he gazed out the bay windows, it’s a devastating, but necessary moment. There was no way Mike Sullivan makes it out of this story alive, not merely because he’d accumulated the bodies of enough made men that the heat was bound to come his way, nor simply because Jude Law’s Harlen Maguire was never gonna take his disfigurement at the hands of Sullivan lightly, but because we’re told that he doesn’t survive less than a minute into the movie. Mike Sullivan the younger in his opening monologue speaks of how he “once spent 6 weeks on the road” with his father. That’s not exactly the way someone talks about their relationship with their still-living father, especially not after the way the two bonded over the course of the film. Following through on the foreshadowing present in your own story is basic storytelling, but you’d be surprised how often basic storytelling principles are sacrificed for the sake of crowd-pleasing.

In between all of that, we get Tom Hanks playing a hitman, and yet, in typical Tom Hanks fashion, even when he’s a bad guy, he’s a good guy. Paul Newman last great film performance (Disney Pixar’s Cars notwithstanding), and a little Stanley Tucci thrown in for good measure. This is a really good movie, though I say that with regret, because a friend told me to watch it and I wanted to dunk on him for being wrong. Other opportunities for dunking will present themselves, I’m sure. For now, I’ll toast some Newman’s Own Honey Balsamic salad dressing in his honor.