The Road (2009)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: John Hillcoat

Writers: Joe Penhall, Cormac McCarthy

Cinematographer: Javier Aguirresarobe

Composers: Nick Cave, Warren Ellis

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Molly Parker, Michael Kenneth Williams, Garret Dillahunt

Adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s excellent 2006 novel, Hillcoat’s post-apocalyptic drama – in which a man and his young son, who was born after the barely seen cataclysmic events, travel ever southwards in search of warmer climes and perhaps a better life, battling against cold, hunger, and “the bad guys” – just about (but for Cave and Ellis’s incongruous and distracting score) manages to capture the artless, melancholy poetry of the book. Iain.Stott