Finally got around to watching the all star cast (Hanks, Newman, Law, Craig) in the Sam Mendes directed 2002 gangster film, Road to Perdition.
First: what a fantastic looking movie. I've only seen a few other Mendes films, and while I don't think American Beauty was particularly memorable for its cinematography (or for anything, really, other than a very unconvincing plot contrivance), I did think Skyfall was a remarkably great looking film. With Road, it's just every single shot is gorgeous - a combination of fantastically detailed art direction, a cinematographer who I should probably look up, and good direction. (It's always a bit unclear to me who to credit most between director and cinematographer as to the look of a film, but I assume the director tells the latter what he/she wants and checks throughout that he/she is getting it.)
As to story: a bit thin and unconvincing in terms of exposition. One key fortuitous event is left completely unexplained (anyone who has seen it probably knows what I mean), and it's a bit puzzling that more care was not taken to explain why or how it happened; or for that matter, why a more convincing motivation of the crucial killing that sets the story going is not really given. The movie is based on a graphic novel, and it seems easy to blame that as the reason. I think it fair to say that I haven't ever seen a film of such origin that has completely convinced me.
Despite this, I thought Hanks was surprisingly good in a less than entirely sympathetic role. All of the actors were pretty good really; the whole movie just suffered a bit from a screenplay inadequacy that prevented it being truly great.
Definitely worth watching, though.
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