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Revolutionary Road

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 89 votes
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Romance
Written by:
Richard Yates (novel)
Justin Haythe
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 26, 2008
DVD: June 2, 2009
Running Time: 119 minutes, Color
Origin: USA | UK
Summary
RATING: R for language and some sexual content/nudity
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour, and Kathy Bates
Adapted from the landmark novel by Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road is an incisive portrait of an American marriage seen through the eyes of Frank and April Wheeler. Yates’ story of 1950’s America poses a question that has been reverberating through modern relationships ever since: can two people break away from the ordinary without breaking apart? (Paramount Vantage)
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...
TV Guide Perry Seibert
Indeed, all of the performers in the film truly shine, and all of them can probably thank Sam Mendes for creating an ideal environment.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The results are being billed as a reunion of the "Titanic" star team, but anyone expecting a similarly gushy romantic idyll is in for a shock: it is an uncompromisingly dreary view of two self-deluded people incapable and unwilling to understand one another.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
There isn't a banal moment in Winslet's performance--not a gesture, not a word. Is Winslet now the best English-speaking film actress of her generation? I think so.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Revolutionary Road is a fine motion picture, but it's not a good choice to lighten a burden or brighten a night. It rewards in the ways that only tragedies can.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
DiCaprio is in peak form, bringing layers of buried emotion to a defeated man. And the glorious Winslet defines what makes an actress great, blazing commitment to a character and the range to make every nuance felt.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Winslet (Mendes' wife) once again demonstrates why she's one of the best actresses working today.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The best thing about Revolutionary Road, a cool-blooded and disquieting adaptation of Richard Yates' 1961 novel about a powerfully unhappy Connecticut couple, is that it doesn't end with that rote vision of bourgeois anomie. It only begins there.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Encouraged by Mendes' artful direction, his gift for eliciting naturalness, the core of this film finally cries out to us today, makes us see that the notion of characters struggling with life, with the despair of betraying their best selves because of what society will or won't allow, is as gripping and relevant now as it ever was. Or ever will be.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
As a whole, Sam Mendes' film of Revolutionary Road comes close but falls short of capturing Richard Yates' terrific novel.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Instead of losing myself in the story, I often felt on the outside looking in, appreciating the craftsmanship, but one step removed from the agony on display. Revolutionary Road is impressive, but it feels like a classic encased in amber.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
A near-perfect case study of the ways in which film is incapable of capturing certain crucial literary qualities, in this case the very things that elevate the book from being a merely insightful study of a deteriorating marriage into a remarkable one.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Don R. Lewis
I couldn't escape the fact that Revolutionary Road seems like a really, really good episode of "Mad Men." There's smoking, drinking, cheating and like the excellent TV show, the lure of a bigger better deal always rules the day. But the film differs in many ways once you get beyond surface appearances.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Fully exploits the drama, with scenes, dialogue, and even key visuals pulled from the text.
Read Full Review >Empire Angie Errigo
Handsomely done and beautifully acted, just slightly wanting in a screenplay that leaves questions unanswered about what's behind these unhappy people. And it's ultra-depressing...
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
However sterling the craftsmanship, the film adaptation inflates the meaning and buffs the atmospheric surfaces of Yates' story, rather than digging into its guts.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
When the tobacco is extinguished what comes between April and Frank Wheeler is bigger, colder and more formidable than the iceberg that sundered Kate and Leo in "Titanic": shattered hope.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Though Revolutionary Road is a less stringent work than Yates's book, it also feels like a more tolerant and humane one.
Read Full Review >NPR Bob Mondello
Director Sam Mendes makes '50s suburbia a persuasively suffocating place — he did the same for '90s suburbia in "American Beauty," remember.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
It's not quite up to the caliber of Richard Yates' novel, which is deeply nuanced and rich in subtext. But the performances are superb, and the film is beautifully shot.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Both director and cast keep the familiar journey intense, but after capturing the death of love in those opening moments, the rest of the film too often feels like a study in dissection.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Scott Foundas
Revolutionary Road isn't a great movie -- it lacks the full, soul-crushing force of the novel -- but what works in it works so well, and is so tricky to pull off, that you can't help but admire it.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
There's a sourness, a relentlessness about the movie which borders on misanthropy. In both the social and the personal scenes, the conversational tone veers between idiotic pleasantries and fathomless bile, with nothing in between.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
Shannon is monstrously good – unpredictable where the other actors are clipped and careful – and he steals the whole picture in two short, shattering scenes. When Shannon exits the film, the air gets sucked out again, and you realize the pretty artifice extends to more than just the Wheelers.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet do exactly what’s asked of them as Frank and April Wheeler, who may be ironically named: They spin emotional wheels constantly but get nowhere.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Maybe it's a cheap shot to call Revolutionary Road "American Beauty" without the laughs, but it gets to the heart of the problem.
Read Full Review >Premiere Jenni Miller
Revolutionary Road isn't emotionally engaging or moving; it's awfully similar in theme to Winslet's 2006 movie "Little Children."
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
It's a textbook example of a well-crafted movie, beautifully shot, impeccably acted, and structured like an elegant three-act play. So why does the movie feel as pleasantly deadening as the midcentury Connecticut suburb where it takes place?
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Mendes has extraordinary gifts, but he has leveled them at the Wheelers like a firing squad. Strangely, he evinced no particular moralizing agenda when making films about the mob or the military. But put ordinary people in his sights and he's venomous. It's unbecoming -- and it should be worked out in private, not in a movie theater.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
A sad experience, but the sadness has no emotional heft because its people have none. This movie hasn't earned its funk.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
An impeccably shot, studiously staged, passionately acted bore, one of those curious fizzles in which everyone seems to do everything right, but the film simply refuses to take off.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The result is that Revolutionary Road is a hard movie to love. Plenty of people will appreciate the hopelessness, but they might wish for a little less emptiness.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
This is a movie about two people in pain; the last thing they need is for Mendes to turn his cool camera on them. But that's all Mendes knows how to do. He's a clinical director, and whatever feeling he puts into a movie is measured out in careful quarter-teaspoon increments.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
"Revolutionary Road" is the kind of great novel that Hollywood tends to botch, because much of it takes place inside the heads of its characters, and because the Wheelers aren't especially likeable and because pessimism without obvious redemption is a tough sell.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
In "Virginia Woolf," George and Martha are locked into a symbiotic, disturbingly needy relationship that absolutely feed off their acidic battles. But for Revolutionary Road's Frank and April Wheeler, you wonder: Why don't they just get a divorce?
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The movie is stifling, all right, and depressing in the bargain.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Revolutionary Road isn't just a failed literary adaptation. It's a failure of the worst kind: It doesn't even make you want to read Richard Yates' deservedly legendary book.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.6 (out of 10) based on 89 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Aidan W gave it an8:
Winslet is outstanding - and makes the movie worth the price. Led to great ranging debates in our house, women, men, relationships, dreams, socialisation and so on. But there is little in the chracters to like and less to love. Beautifully shot.
France l gave it a5:
Here is another example of a fine novel poorly translated by Hollywood. Although it is beautifully filmed and beautifully acted, this movie ultimately lacks the heart and sensitively crafted innuendo of the novel,. leaving the viewer totally indifferent towards the characters.
Brett K gave it a0:
This movie was extremely boring. I kept waiting for something to happen but nothing did. Don't waste your time.
killdarren gave it a0:
Never have I seen a more selfish, ungrateful and disgusting set of people. What is so wrong with their life? I can't believe their behavior. This movie is all fake and wrong. It's all too painfully pretentious and self-aware. For god's sake it's called being thankful for what you have and if you aren't it's called a DIVORCE!!! Get over yourselves.
Jagged Reviews segment gave it a10:
One of the most undiluted, bravest and incredible films i have ever seen. You feel the tension, hate, love and thanks to Sam Mendes, the killing blow which is the lie of the perfect american dream which can be found without problems. The film is so devastating andit will leave you sitting in your seat pondering the film, letting the feeling sink in...just like any masterpiece should.
Jack C gave it a7:
This movie is good. It's also a bit over the top and melodramatic. DiCaprio and Winslet are good actors, but I honestly didn't buy them in either role; I felt I was aware I was watching actors the entire time. I don't want to be too negative, because there are some very good moments in the film, and the opening minutes are especially good. However, I personally felt the film just came up short of its (quite huge) potential.
Mariel A. gave it a9:
I totally got it. I don't think it is a movie people in general would get because it is for women who want/ed out of the ''standard''. The line where she says that they had another child so that it is clear the first one was not a mistake, WOW, that was so powerful.
