...it involves the audience in its action from beginning to end.
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Say it ain't so, Joe. Er, Tom. Say you're not a villain. I mean, not our Forrest Gump, not our castaway who was sleepless in Seattle, who was Big, who saved Private Ryan, for crying out loud.
Fortunately, even when Tom Hanks is playing a bad guy, he's a good guy. David Self's screenplay for 2002's "Road to Perdition" sees to that, a screenplay far less violent than the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner on which the script is based. Hanks is still the "Angel of Death," the number-one hit man for the Rooney gang, an affiliate of the Capone organization in 1931, but he's not quite so brutal in this latest translation. In fact, he's a straight-arrow family man, living in the suburbs with a beautiful wife and two young sons. He may be a cold-blooded murderer, but apparently it's only a job, nine-to-five.
It doesn't pay to analyze the story and characters too much or they begin sounding downright melodramatic. Chalk it up to the expertise of relative newcomer Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") directing with such a sure hand that everything comes out as well as it does. What could have been just another blustery gangster picture with maudlin overtones is turned into a lyrical vision of love and loyalty and bonding, a poetic coming-of-age for a father and son.
Admittedly, the story lays it on pretty thick at the beginning and only exaggerates it further as it goes along. Hanks plays Mike Sullivan, a fellow viewed almost as a son by big-time gangster John Rooney (Paul Newman), who long ago took him in, somewhat in the manner of Tom Hagen in "The Godfather." But Rooney's got another son, a real son, Connor (Daniel Craig), who's hotheaded, somewhat in the manner of Sonny in, uh, "The Godfather." Do you sense a pattern here? Anyway, Connor gets the plot's ball rolling after an introductory sequence that establishes Rooney's affection for Mike and Mike's affection for both his primary and secondary families.
Connor, you see, is not only hotheaded but crooked, vicious, and stupid, as well. And, unfortunately (for everyone but the audience or we wouldn't have a picture), Connor does something particularly stupid with Mike by his side, murdering a rival mobster and several of his henchmen with Mike's help while Mike's oldest son, Michael, Jr., age twelve, accidentally, surreptitiously, looks on. When Connor finds out that they've been seen by the boy, he thinks only to protect himself by attempting to wipe out the entire Sullivan family. Call it pent-up jealousy or whatever, he almost accomplishes the deed, killing Sullivan's wife and boy, Peter, but not getting the actual witness, young Michael, or Sullivan himself.
The rest of the film is an old-fashioned chase and revenge flick, complete with bank robberies, fast cars, and gun battles, with the added luxury of some serious themes and character relationships blossoming at almost every turn. Should old-man Rooney support his designated adopted son, Sullivan, so loyal and hardworking, or his own blood relative, Connor, a psychopathic nincompoop? Should Sullivan break his ties with young Michael, or might he find that being on the lam together will enable the two of them to bond like never before? Does "Perdition" refer only to the small town the Sullivans are heading toward or the road the older Sullivan has already taken, the road to hell from which he can never return, the road he has always wanted desperately to keep his sons from travelling?
Mendes guides his characters to Oscar-worthy performances. Hanks, the unlikeliest of heavies, is actually well cast as the aloof, reticent, soft-spoken, but cool and calculating hired gun, whom we are led to believe isn't so evil after all because he only kills bad guys. One of the great joys of the film is watching his character's relationship with his son unfold, a son he had not truly known until the advent of these tragic events. The veteran Newman, too, communicates an appropriate sense of anguish over his dilemma as a man facing the toughest choices of a long and tumultuous life. His is a complex and conflicted role, and Newman, as usual, is up to the challenge. Then there's Tyler Hoechlin as Michael, Jr., holding his own against the illustrious older actors; Jennifer Jason Leigh and Liam Aiken as Sullivan's doomed wife, Annie, and son, Peter; Stanley Tucci as Frank Nitti, Capone's right-hand man; and Jude Law as Maguire, the relentless killer sent out after Sullivan and his son.
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[release]10760[/release]