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Road to Perdition
DreamWorks Distribution LLC


7.1

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 62 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for violence and language

Starring Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stanley Tucci, Liam Aiken, and Dylan Baker

A portrayal of two families whose fates are determined by the complex and often combative relationships between fathers and their sons. (DreamWorks Pictures)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	David Self Max Allan Collins (graphic novel) Richard Piers Rayner (graphic novel)
DIRECTED BY:	Sam Mendes
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: February 25, 2003 Video: February 25, 2003 Theatrical: July 12, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	119 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

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...

100

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Has the juice to get its hooks into you, knock you off balance and keep you that way for two hours. It's a triumph for director Sam Mendes. The passion and precision of his Road work is staggering.

100

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A truly majestic visual tone poem.

100

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Overflowing with melancholy and tragedy, Road to Perdition is one of the most somber gangster pictures ever made.

100

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

This movie would be worth feting in any season. It's wrenching but never manipulative, stoic but never dull, exhausting but never wearying.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Mendes, in only his second feature (following the Oscar-winning "American Beauty"), has told this surprisingly resonant story with the potent, unrelenting fatalism of a previously unknown Greek myth.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Sam Mendes' much-anticipated second effort after his Oscar-winning "American Beauty" finds him working in a very different key while displaying an even more pronounced attentiveness to tone, genre variations and artistic niceties.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's a genteel film with a gun in its pocket, but it's also a film with a universal chord of feeling that keeps welling up from the dark surfaces and violent byways of the plot-and a final confession that both warms the heart and chills the blood.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a dark, brooding, moody film that follows a grim narrative to a logical inevitability and is nonetheless fully infused with a spirit of humanity.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie misfires: It's numbingly cold and soulless, and the zeitgeist stays far beyond its reach. But it's so visually striking you almost don't notice, its relentlessly somber mood has a certain masochistic appeal and, while hardly a career-redefining performance, Hanks is as winning as ever.

TV Guide Ken Fox

This dark, almost mythic heart is what makes the film such an emotionally rich experience.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Results are classy entertainment with little to interest women viewers but very shrewdly and cleverly put together, and probably more rewarding in long-range terms if you invest in Fox or Dreamworks than if you actually see the movie.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Long and winding though it may be, Road to Perdition gets to places that are well worth the trip.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Try as he might, (Hanks) is miscast in Road to Perdition, a partly satisfying gangster drama that amounts to less than the sum of its handsome parts.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Paradoxically, the closer Mendes gets to his characters, the more remote Perdition becomes. One wishes that his film had as much heart as it does art.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Choice, a luxury of the Corleones, is denied to the Sullivans and Rooneys, and choice or its absence is the difference between Sophocles and Shakespeare. I prefer Shakespeare.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This is a remarkably good-looking near-corpse of a film, with a pulse that fades in and out.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Romanticizes gangland Chicago, but no more so than other films set in the same period. And, like almost every movie about the mob, this one deals with themes of family, loyalty, and betrayal -- albeit without the intensity of some of the great ones ("The Godfather," "Goodfellas").

USA Today Mike Clark

Impressive yet always self-conscious, Perdition has more class and less sass than any movie in a while.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

There's much that's simplistically grand, worthy, and fine in Perdition. If I yearn for less measured filmmaking that cries out with more reckless despair, it's because I think hell on earth is a meaner, much more interesting, and far less tidy cinematic place than Mendes trusts his audience to handle.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Paved with such good intentions and talent that it's sad to report this lavishly mounted gangster epic - the most serious-minded Hollywood film of the season - doesn't come close to living up to expectations.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Mendes -- wants to have it both ways, to get close to mob life, but be no part of it. And he keeps us at a dime-novel distance, too. He has made a dreamy, poetic impression of a world that exists only on film and in comic strips, and that has no resonance for most of us.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Subdued yet percolating with suppressed emotion.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

There's something impressive and yet lacking about everything.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

I'm not sure Sam Mendes' latest is a masterpiece as so many critics are exclaiming but it is very probably the most artful and earnest drama ever adapted from a comic book.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Mendes' second effort plays like a familiar song transposed to a minor key, a gangland fable soaked in portent and fatalism until its familiarity ceases to be an issue.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

In the scenes between Hanks and Newman, we get glimpses of greatness.

The New Yorker David Denby

For all the beauty and power of Road to Perdition, there's not much spontaneity in it, and the movie's flawless surface puts a stranglehold on meaning. [15 July 2002. p. 90]

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

It's a dirty, ugly, joyless world these fathers and sons live in, and for all the passion involved, of retribution and a father's fierce love, Perdition is as emotionally distant as Sullivan. The feelings are all there, just submerged.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Its seriousness is welcome. It's also a burden the film can't completely surmount.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Visually more coherent than "American Beauty," but despite the burnished mahogany of Conrad Hall's cinematography, Mendes still doesn't quite know how to fill a frame. Like the Hanks character, he's a slow study: The action is stilted and the tabloid energy embalmed.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Feels like a movie that keeps wishing it were something else: an award-winning play, a grand novel, an epic poem, anything but that populist thing we call a movie. Mendes makes movies as if he hates them.

Slate David Edelstein

Law gives a doozy of a performance: He's fond of bulging his eyes, curling his head like a gargoyle, and displaying a set of rotten yellow teeth. This is some of the most flamboyantly bad acting since Brad Pitt in "Twelve Monkeys" (1995). An Oscar nomination would appear inevitable.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

A change from summer fare, but it doesn't make the picture compelling to watch. You won't find the detail of the "Godfather" films or the psychological complexities of Martin Scorsese's gangster movies. The plot holes are big enough to hide Al Capone's illicit millions in.

Newsweek David Ansen

Self-conscious to the point of suffocation.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

On screen, Road to Perdition becomes a lace-curtain shoot-'em-up about fathers and sons. The graphic novel is more kinetic and more powerful than the motion picture.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Like a date who's primped too long to arrive at dinner with something to talk about, Road to Perdition is beautifully groomed and a perfect drag to be with.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 62 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jean C. gave it a9:
A brilliant film, actors are very good. A very simple movie, but very stylised also. It's realy a great film.

F K gave it a10:
Oustanding.

Marshall M. gave it a10:
Amazing, it was nominated for 7 academy awards. but it was missing from the most important category, BEST PICTURE! it was strongly underrated, this is one of the best gangter films i've seen, great acting, perfect cinematography, a masterpeice!

Bill C. gave it a3:
This film should have been better and it could have been.The Jude Law charactor is a waste,the screen writer should have stayed closer to the novel.Hanks and Newman were both up to the task and their talents were largely wasted.Read the novel,it's a much better story. It's a good example of someone pushing the art of film making while botching the story within the film.Bill C.

Michael M. gave it a 10:
[***PLOT REVELATIONS***] One of the best gangster films ever made; it has all the best qualities to a movie = great writing, direction and a cast that will blow you away! I cannot stress on how much of an outstanding movie this is. It is just so great! It is a great movie about organized crime, and the kill scenes are nicely directed. The story is about a very talented hitman called 'The Angel of Death' (Tom Hanks) who was adopted by a mean old crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman - In his Academy Award nominated performance) at a very young age. Since John treats Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks - a.k.a. The Angel of Death) as his favorite son, John's real son Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig) gets very jealous and tries to have some business man secretly (without his father's consent) kill Michael. Well, that doesn't go as well as planned, and Michael ends up killing the business man and some of his associates. But, Michael's family isn't so lucky, when Connor himself kills Michael's wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and youngest son, leaving Michael only with his oldest son, Michael Sullivan, Jr. Since John must kill Michael in order for him to protect Connor, Michael and his son hit the road to Chicago to hide out. In Chicago, John has everyone looking for Michael including Frank Nitti, Al Capeone and a warped hitman named Maguire (Jude Law) who poses as a reporter, takes pictures of his victims, and wears a 'Charlie Chaplin'/'Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange' hat. The movie really moves along quickly and isn't slow at all. The story is really interesting, but the movie only got 1 major Academy Award Nomination. It should have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor - Tom Hanks and Best Director - Sam Mendes, instead of just Paul Newman getting nominated. This film is all around excellence, but isn't as good as Mendes' first feature 'American Beauty'. 22 February 2003.

Pat C. gave it a 4:
It's a cautionary tale: If you're naughty, you might live a boring pointless life then get shot. But not soon enough.

Dave C. gave it a 6:
This film is flawlessly acted but suffers from an occasionally flawed script, lack of emotional involvment with the characters, gimmicky camera work. To be honest, I even disagree with the people who said this film was beautifully shot. The fact that this was digitally shot makes it look somewhat ugly and unconvincing. There are no really powerful images in the film. Never did I feel any empathy for the father and son, never did I feel that the film was trying to teach me a valuable lesson. At the end of the day, this film never seems to strive for anything more than a pseudo-moral lesson that is less inspiring than some episodes of Power Rangers. "Violence and guns are bad, don't let your kids get dragged into it". Thanks for that. But for a film so seemingly determined to be politically correct and wholesome in its purpose, it sure is quick to show stereotypical portrayals of women and homosexuals. Make no mistake. This film was made with one thing in mind, WIN AN OSCAR, and to its credit, it does have some of the hallmarks of an oscar winner, none of the performances are second rate, the story is well constructed and often uses visual narrative in a very clever manner, the editing not overdone and the film never descends into soppy sentimentality until the cringe-inducing closing narrative. So if you want my advice, don't listen to the critics, this is no masterpiece or cinematic triumph by any stretch of the imagination. On technical terms, it's brilliant (if you're not like me and you don't mind digital filming) and at times is interesting as a gangster film with an unusually atmospheric tone but is otherwise an unfortunate example of the soullessness of Hollywood.

Road to Perdition DreamWorks Distribution LLC

Road to Perdition
DreamWorks Distribution LLC