Three films about fucking walking!

"The Road is fucking hard
The Road is fucking tough
There's no question that,
It is rough rough stuff"
(Jables and Kage, The D, 2001)

The Road is the second big Cormac McCarthy adaptation in the last few years, and up against the Coen's work on No Country, a film considered by most to be an absolute masterpiece (It's great, just not as great as There Will Be Blood) John Hillcoat has the odds stacked high against him.
A depressing tale of post-apocalypse America, savage cannibal gangs roaming the roads, our heroes a Man and Boy walking to the coast, trying to survive, limited food, no sun, no animals. Oh, yeah, and every scene has to be completely deserted with large elements of destruction.
And it's absolutely bleak and harrowing.
Think you're up for that? Well, somehow Hillcoat pulls off a miracle. The film, whilst slow to start, really kicks into gear, suddenly out of nowhere you realise you're nervous about the survival of the pair against the cannibals, be it on a small road or in a house where they appear to be centred on.
And yet that's not the predominant plot of the film. It's a father and son walking, the father teaching the son how to live and what to do so that the boy is ready to go alone one day, the horror aspects don't creep in often, but they're forceful enough to be both memorable and haunting throughout scenes, at the happiest moments your mind still wanders to the outside, humanity's last gleaming.

Whilst the film goes back to the first day of the end of the world and then years later, focussing on the relationship between Man and Wife (Charlize Theron in a throwaway role), the best stuff is the majority, the threats of the 'present' day issues. Though the look at Theron's Mother wanting to die to escape the hell they are in, over staying with her family, and wishing she never had Boy, bringing him into such a world, the power is lost in these moments, Theron's character just comes off like a bitch, and we care vastly more for Viggo Mortenson's Man.
Mortenson is absolutely fantastic in this, as is his screen son Kodi Smit-Mcphee, another young talent that's not annoying (Kids these days, why did my generation have the shit actors, the Freddie Highmores, the Hayley Joel Osments, the Little Annie Skywalkers?) and the relationship between them never comes across as fabricated, it felt like we were watching a father and son, emotionless and struggling through a bleak existence.
And yet when cameo appearances from Robert Duvall, Michael K. Williams and Guy Pierce (Who is having a resurgence as the 5 minute appearance guy) make their way into the character's lives for a few minutes, they never overshadow, overwhelm or feel out of place, working perfectly with the morality, the inhumanity and the nature that these people have lived with for years.

The production design in this film is immense, I went and had a look at where they filmed, shocked to find it was only one small segment of unused road, not a whole state's worth of wilderness, it's mindbogling and amazingly done, the CGI blends effortlessly with the practical elements living off a sense of depth in the destruction that's never showing off, nor anything more than set, no big action for the destruction. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, one of the finest looking films I've seen for months, and for something that feels predominantly monochromatic, that's no mean feat, especially when they have to portray the sun as being gone too.

As near a perfect film as you can get, it's tense, well crafted, emotionally affecting, well acted and interesting. Not something you can enjoy in an entertaining sense, but it still deserves more attention that it's received.
10/10