"The Road Is the Most Important Movie of the Year"

[Legion2213]

At least ol' Viggo didn't have gills. I can count that as a huge positive. Heh! This was actually on TV a few weeks ago...Dennis Hopper was awesomely over the top in "crazed villian mode", God rest his soul.

[SRP76]

There were a couple of parts that made my eyes roll in this movie, though. Just in case...   The whole "Cannibal House" routine. Gee, we've got a mound of discarded clothing. A bunch of used pots and pans. A fucking barbeque grill set up and well-used. All in the only property within a billion miles that hasn't been ransacked. Wow, I wonder fucking WHY. A 10-year-old kid knew from the start what was up, and all his experience could fit in a flea's suitcase. But ol' Viggo, though, he's slow as fuck on the uptake. It drives me crazy when I can diagnose the scene in 5 seconds, but the main character is just retardedly oblivious to his surroundings. And something that I thought was odd...   The family "followed" them all along. Well, Viggo & Son were caught up in all sorts of shit, from Deliverance geeks at the start, to Cannibal House, to Humongous' Army killing a woman and her kid, to trees "attacking" them. Now, how in hell did this family and their dog NOT wind up getting spotted and murdered by at least one of these "enemies" along the way, if they were close enough to be watching and following?

[krakenslayer]

Ah. So there was no real destination, just a fear that the kid would croak if they stayed put. Alright. I wondered about that, because amongst all the whispering, I thought I heard "all the animals died" and "all the plants are dead" and "everything is dead" and "we're all going to be dead". Made me wonder "okay, so where the hell do you think you're going? It's the same wasteland everywhere". I guess it was just desperation. The grass is always greener on the other side, there's always the hope that somewhere things are better. Even if you know, logically, that you're probably not going to find any salvation, you just keep moving on in hope because it's the only thing left to do, other than curl up and die.

[Legion2213]

I guess it was just desperation. The grass is always greener on the other side, there's always the hope that somewhere things are better. Even if you know, logically, that you're probably not going to find any salvation, you just keep moving on in hope because it's the only thing left to do, other than curl up and die. They did the same in "Mad Max II", all they really had to go on were post cards from days gone by showing somewhere nice on the coast, but they still went for it.

[SRP76]

They did the same in "Mad Max II", all they really had to go on were post cards from days gone by showing somewhere nice on the coast, but they still went for it. I don't remember that at all. I thought that movie was about a bunch of people at the refinery, and Humongous and his boys were attacking to get at the gas. And the whole movie was about "oh shit, we're getting attacked". It's a bit foggy in my memory.

[Legion2213]

I don't remember that at all. I thought that movie was about a bunch of people at the refinery, and Humongous and his boys were attacking to get at the gas. And the whole movie was about "oh shit, we're getting attacked". It's a bit foggy in my memory. Yeah, they were holding out against The Humongous and his gang while they made enough "guzoline" to transport their entire community to "the promised land" in a convoy of buses and stuff.

[SRP76]

Yeah, they were holding out against The Humongous and his gang while they made enough "guzoline" to transport their entire community to "the promised land" in a convoy of buses and stuff. Ah, okay. I thought they were just running out of there to avoid getting slaughtered. "Running the blockade", so to speak.

[Mr.G]

Great book but HORRIBLE movie. Before I watched it I questioned why it didn't get a wider release....but now, I understand.

[BillyRay]

Great book but HORRIBLE movie. Before I watched it I questioned why it didn't get a wider release....but now, I understand. I never knew Mad Max II was a book. >huh.< The things you learn on the Intertubes...

[Legion2213]

So, I was getting wholly sick and tired of dipping into this thread and passing the odd comment without actually having seen the movie and procrastinating about grabbing it on BD sooner or later...so I did the next best thing and DL'd a good quality version last night and watched it early hours of the morning. Jesus Christ! What a grim film...it was like a tripple decker grim sandwich with extra layers of grim for good measure! I definitely want to own this on Blu-Ray (although it will be more like Grey-Ray with this flick). It really did convey a sense of utter hopelessness when you looked at the landscape. The father son interaction was really well done IMO, it wasn't preachy and there was no bullshitting about morals and the American way or any other pointless stuff...the dad was just trying to set his son up for survival without turning him into one of those canibal scavenger types. There was at least one WTF? moment for me, but on the whole, this was a great movie...a genuinely brilliant work in the PA genere as far as I am concerned. I probably need to sit back and digest what I watched before making more comments (probably watch it again in the week as well), but for now, I am saited and pretty happy I watched it. (I got the unabridged audiobook while I was at it, so I will listen to that as well and compare it to the movie).

[MinionZombie]

Glad you dug it, Legion. Also, The Road is really only partly about an apocalypse. The book is really about the father & son. It's a book for fathers, and a book for sons. It's a father/son story that just so happens to be set against an apocalypse. For the fathers in the audience it shows the undying devotion that a father will give their son and plays on a father's fears of how their son will cope when they're gone, and to the sons in the audience it shows what a father will do for a son, and it plays on fears of losing your father. So it's a very powerful story, amplified by the - as you say - utterly hopeless background. The Book of Eli, as cool a movie as it is, is still a "movie apocalypse" ... The Road, on the other hand, is just the apocalypse. No factions with steam-punk style, no Mad Max action sequences, just a desperate endurance trudge through a dying/dead world in the hope that there is a sliver of chance for survival out there - keeping the fire alive, as they say in the film/book.

[Neil]

Glad you dug it, Legion. Also, The Road is really only partly about an apocalypse. The book is really about the father & son. It's a book for fathers, and a book for sons. It's a father/son story that just so happens to be set against an apocalypse. For the fathers in the audience it shows the undying devotion that a father will give their son and plays on a father's fears of how their son will cope when they're gone, and to the sons in the audience it shows what a father will do for a son, and it plays on fears of losing your father. So it's a very powerful story, amplified by the - as you say - utterly hopeless background. The Book of Eli, as cool a movie as it is, is still a "movie apocalypse" ... The Road, on the other hand, is just the apocalypse. No factions with steam-punk style, no Mad Max action sequences, just a desperate endurance trudge through a dying/dead world in the hope that there is a sliver of chance for survival out there - keeping the fire alive, as they say in the film/book. Damn you for putting it so perfectly!!

[JDFP]

Jesus Christ! What a grim film...it was like a tripple decker grim sandwich with extra layers of grim for good measure! (I got the unabridged audiobook while I was at it, so I will listen to that as well and compare it to the movie). Best. Review. Ever. -- at least for "The Road". I have to give a shout out to Cormac McCarthy, the man who wrote the book the film is based on as well as "No Country For Old Men" -- he's a Knoxville native just as I am and my grandpa knew him fairly well back "in the day". j.p.

[Danny]

Okay, bumping a 2 year old thread to say i just rewatched the road and what the shit. The blu ray is a totally different cut to what i saw a couple of years ago! halfway through now but things i noticed: -all the rivers are cgi'ed green in nighttime shots intimating its clearly something radioactive in origin behind the fall of society. -far more lingering shots on things like a hanging family in a shed that emphasis how unattached to the world the son is. -more shots of theron showing she lived a very privileged life beforehand and was suffering from a severe depression after a traumatic childbirth which lead to her being unable to cope. -a scene where the son asks the dad if they would never eat people and he says no, but then looks at his hands for a second to see them shaking, which is a common movie trope to show someones eaten human meat before. -you can actually hear viggo as more than whispers from what ive read online there was some shitty cuts doing the rounds a few years back with bad audio and lots of cuts taken to remove some shots. that sounds like what i watched the first time way back. What i just watched was a very different viewing experience and a much better film. it had pacing, there was more stuff in the first half this time and lot less fast cuts. I enjoy it way more and it pisses me off that my first viewing was with such a shitty cut that coloured my opinion of the film in ways i can say seem pretty unfair now that ive seen this far superior cut.

[MinionZombie]

^^^ I take it that's the same version on the DVD ... I must re-watch The Road, been meaning to for a while now ... I really dig the movie. It's incredibly bleak - as I've always said, The Book of Eli (which came out around about the same time, damn close in fact) is the 'movie apocalypse', it's the cool apocalypse with sweet hand-to-hand combat, stylish cinematography etc, and The Road is flat out the apocalypse ... there's no hope, it's ever-so bleak, every single moment in that world is an unparalleled struggle, and probably much more like how a real apocalypse would actually turn out. Have you read the book? I think it's better than the film, but the film is still rather good. I keep telling my Dad he should read the book, but he keeps saying no because it's just too bleak, hehe. I remember seeing it in the cinema and these two tween-age boys snuck into the screening towards the end of the movie (having clearly been to see something else prior), and it made me chuckle, because it's so bleak and serious that it's totally not what those kids would have been hoping for/expecting (whereas The Book of Eli would have been more like what they'd be expecting/wanting).