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Road, The
EMAILPRINTThe Weinstein Company

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 93 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Adventure | Drama | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Joe Penhall
Nick Wechsler
Directed by: John Hillcoat
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 25, 2009
DVD: May 25, 2010
Running Time: 119 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for some violence, disturbing images and language
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Guy Pearce
Based on Cormac McCarthy's beloved, best-selling and Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen leads an all-star cast in the big screen adaptation of The Road, the epic post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son across a barren landscape that was blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and most life on earth. (The Weinstein Company)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
USA Today Claudia Puig
While the film is not as resonant as the novel, it is an honorable adaptation, capturing the essence of the bond between father and son.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The Road evokes the images and the characters of Cormac McCarthy's novel. It is powerful, but for me lacks the same core of emotional feeling.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
In this haunting portrait of America as no country for old men or young, Hillcoat -- through the artistry of Mortensen and Smit-McPhee -- carries the fire of our shared humanity and lets it burn bright and true.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The Road walks a tremendously daring and delicate line between inspiration and horror, and it does so not only in the events it depicts but in its very air and atmosphere. It was unforgettable on the page, and it impresses equally, or at least it does so remarkably often, on screen.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Elias Savada
It is compellingly enervating and a marvel in the filmmaking process.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Between the two performances there's not a false note. Between the father and son there's an unbreakable bond. Though civilization has ended, love and parental duty shape the course of this fable, which is otherwise as heartwarming as a Beckett play shorn of humor.
Read Full Review >Empire Dan Jolin
One of the most chillingly effective visions of the world’s end ever put on screen -- and a heart-rending study of parenthood, to boot.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Intense and, yes, depressing - and earns every minute that it rattles inside your head.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Joshua Rothkopf
And then, Robert Duvall appears—or, should I say, insinuates himself out of the muck. Cagily, his character wends his way into the story, played by the one American actor who might best understand the limits of bluster. “It’s foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these,” he mutters in the Duvall twang, the weather and indignity beaten into him, and The Road suddenly feels major.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Essentially a love story, as stripped of sentimentality as the landscape is shorn of green, yet an extraordinary love story nonetheless – powerful and poignant and, even in the midst of hope's imminent extinction, hopeful too.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
The Road isn't a masterpiece...But I cannot think of another film this year that has stayed with me, its images of dread and fear - and yes, perhaps hope - kicking around like such a terrible dream.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Amy Biancolli
The latest in a year filled with Armageddon movies such as "Terminator Salvation" and "2012," and it won't be the last, but it's the most chilling so far.
Read Full Review >Premiere Mark Salisbury
This might just be a tad too grueling and bleak for everyone’s liking, but it’s a Road that’s definitely well worth traveling.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The movie The Road is nowhere close to its literary sire, but it's probably the best one could hope for from a movie version.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
The filmmakers capture enough of the book's essence -- and the power of its knockout, transcendent ending -- to more than justify the movie's existence.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young
Director John Hillcoat has performed an admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale, even at the cost of sacrificing color, big scenes and standard Hollywood imagery of post-apocalyptic America.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Engrossing and at times impressive, a pretty good movie that is disappointing to the extent that it could have been great. Is this the way the world ends? With polite applause?
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
John Hillcoat's The Road is an honorable adaptation of a piece of pulp fiction disguised as high art; it a has more directness and more integrity than its source material, the 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Portrayed ad infinitum in sci-fi and fantasy, the postapocalypse may now seem about as scary as Post Raisin Bran, but Hillcoat gives it an unnerving solidity by focusing on the drab details of survival and linking them to the more hellish aspects of modern American life.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
The Road deviates from McCarthy's original text via a series of flashbacks to the man's pre-apocalyptic life with the woman (Theron) who both leaves her family behind and is in turn left behind by them.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
There's enough foreboding in America right now to make sitting through a movie such as The Road seem like one more heavy burden that, frankly, no one needs.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Aas grim as The Road gets, Hillcoat goes a little soft at the wrong time. Someone like Michael Haneke would have no trouble embracing this material’s uncompromising dreariness.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Everything about the film is a welcome rebuke to the happy-face apocalypse of “2012,’’ a movie that turns mass extinction into the Greatest Show on Earth. In The Road, what has been lost is recognized as infinitely precious; what’s left is bitter and our due.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams
The Road has the signposts of an important film, but it lacks the diversions of an inviting trip.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The best thing about the film is Viggo Mortensen’s performance. A stealth talent of many shadings, Mortensen has a way of fitting easily into nearly any period, any milieu.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The Road possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
The Road is a road you'll wish hadn't been taken. Not because anything's been badly done, but because there's a serious imbalance in the complicated equation between what the film forces us to endure and what we end up receiving in return.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Evocative as it is, The Road comes up short, not because it’s bleak but because it’s monotonous.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Doesn't offer plot or an inquiry into the evil in men's hearts. It simply wallows in the filth and inhumanity that surround a father and his pre-adolescent son as they march across the shattered remains of this country.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
For everything the movie gets right--most notably the impressively pared-down script by Joe Penhall and the two truthful and fearless performances from Mortensen and McPhee--there's a corresponding painful blunder, like the overwrought score from Nick Cave.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The novelist Cormac McCarthy was served well by the Coen Brothers' adaptation of his novel "No Country for Old Men" but comes a cropper in The Road, a lugubrious trek through postapocalyptic debris.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
Pale by comparison to an action thriller like "Children of Men" or gross out eco-catastrophe like "Land of the Dead," squandering its ready-made zombie scenario.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 93 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Mikey M gave it a9:
This is not for the Avatar crowd. It's bleak but intense and not for everyone. Loved it.
James S. gave it an8:
Yes it did lack a little plot development, as in nothing much happens but I could feel the father and sons struggle throughout and the end was genuinely sad.
charles s. gave it a9:
Left me thinking about it for weeks. That is the mark of an impressive movie!
Keaton J. gave it a9:
The world has been destroyed by natural causes, and the few survivors that are left are mostly insane caravans of cannibals. Sound fun? Maybe for a video game, but the way The Road depicts it sure doesn't look like fun. This movie is based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, which I have never read, but if the book is as good as the movie, I'm down for a good reading period. The story follows two main characters as they try to survive in the treacherous wasteland, neither of which is ever named. They are just called "Papa" and "Son". The mother/wife is only shown in series of flashbacks from before the natural disasters and at the very beginning. "Papa" is played by Viggo Mortensen, and it is an incredible performance. Mortensen does an amazing job creating a father that will do anything to keep his son safe. He has to be tough on his son to teach him the harsh realities of this dangerous world. At the same time as this he deals with the loss of his wife. I couldn't imagine a better performance. The kid is acted by Kodi Smit-McPhee, who also does an outstanding job. A very interesting side character also comes in part way through the movie who is acted by Robert Duvall. The story is all together dark and dreary. This movie does not try and make the end of the world look all cool by using a sepia lens filter or slow motion killing. It shows a depressing, scary, and perilous world. A terrifyingly real world. There are really no laughing moments in this movie. The faint of heart should stray away from this road, because they will find nothing to smile about until the end, and that only if the viewer looks hard enough. I'm not going ruin the end for you guys, but I will tell you that it is beautiful. The Road is a tough film, but through all of the cannibalism and death, there is still a small glimmer of optimism seen through the life of a child and through the fact that even in times of severe suffering and distress, all hope is never lost.
Seba W.r gave it a10:
This movie is amazing. It's sad, thrilling and it was a great plot! This is a must see.
Andrew C gave it a9:
Was almost exactly as I envisioned it when I read the book. Very well done - terrific acting by all involved and a superb, resonating score In the book, I felt there were too many instances where the father and son were eating food, which would occur less often in a post apocalyptic wasteland. Then again, they may not be alive to make the story, but the movie emphasized starvation, so in that respect it was an improvement. A couple scenes of the murderous chaos following the depletion of food supplies, described briefly by Macarthy, would have been nice, and I agree with others who desired some lingering panoramic shots of devastation, but these quibbles are a trifle. Not much more can be asked of a screen adaptation from an awe inspiring novel - very moving. The crazy thing is that the possibility of Macarthy's world becoming a reality is not beyond comprehension.
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
If your a fan of the book, you won't be disappointed. The Road is an amazing adaptation and overall a wonderful movie.
