In the antithesis to the typical summer blockbuster, Sam Mendes, director of "American Beauty," doles out a second dose of dysfunction in "Road to Perdition."
It's 1931, an Irish mob is dominating the Midwestern scene, and the name of the game is perdition: the loss of the soul, eternal damnation or, simply, hell.
Michael Sullivan, played by Tom Hanks, is practically the adopted son of and lead defense henchman for John Rooney (Paul Newman) until Sullivan's own son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) witnesses a brutal mob massacre. When Michael Jr.'s presence is discovered, all hell breaks loose. A downward spiral of events leads to the father-son team robbing banks from Chicago to Perdition and wrangling with an odd assortment of mob-tied enemies, all in the name of revenge.
Based on a 1998 graphic novel of the same name written by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner, "Road to Perdition" has none of the comic book-esque qualities commonly associated with such material. The film stays true to the novel in much of the storyline and presents the dramatic comic book posing of characters, but overall, the movie's style evokes throwbacks to Mendes' Oscar-garnering "American Beauty."
Aside from the haunting score and the cleanly detailed aesthetics that define Mendes films, the real tie is not stylistic but characteristic: "Beauty's" voyeuristic Ricky Fitz is reborn to the dark side as Maguire, a photographer whose large format camera captures images both deathly and grotesque.
But Maguire (Jude Law) does not search for his form of beauty in the world, as Fitz did but creates the scenes he wishes to photograph by finishing off murder victims or hiring himself out as an assassin of sorts. Additionally, he's the opposition to Fitz's physical beauty -- it's disarming to see Law, possessor of one of Hollywood's finest physiques, transformed into a grimy, skulking ooze of man, flashing decayed teeth and sporting dirt-encrusted wife-beaters.
Just as disturbing, though, is the transformation of Hanks from the hero of "Saving Private Ryan" to blood-letting, bank-robbing Sullivan. Though the part is impeccably acted, the believability of it comes not from Hanks' skill, but from the plain fact that, even as a mobster, Sullivan still has the best of intentions.
