The Road 2009

A.O. Scott, At the Movies: It hits a few tinny, sentimental notes. Still, I admire the craft and conviction of this film, and I was impressed enough by the look and the performances to recommend that you see it. Read more

Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times: Hillcoat certainly provides the requisite seriousness, but what the movie lacks is an underlying sense of innocence, a sense that, however far humanity has sunk, there is at least some chance of rising again. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Already, Hillcoat's film has divided critics on the international festival circuit. The one constant is the praise, rightly so, for Mortensen. Read more

Kathleen Murphy, MSN Movies: ... what remains of 'The Road' is an honorable failure, given there was never any real hope of translating McCarthy's style-driven novel into film. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: The most arresting aspect of The Road is just how fully the filmmakers have realized this bleak, blighted landscape of a modern society reduced to savagery. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: The Road, a tremulous heartbreaker onscreen, has successfully made the leap despite an unthinkable amount of fidelity. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Evocative as it is, The Road comes up short, not because it's bleak but because it's monotonous, and because McCarthy's vision is finally as inflexible as his patriarchal hero's. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: You hang on to yourself for dear life, resisting belief as best you can in the face of powerful acting, persuasive filmmaking and the perversely compelling certainty that nothing will turn out all right. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Mortensen warms the film with his presence, creating a vivid portrait of a bereft man clinging to the one thing he has left. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Hillcoat gives the film a remarkably evocative backdrop, but the drama lacks depth and dimension, and the scenes tend to blur together. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: The Road can be a tough slog, but the journey is a rewarding one. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: In adapting this harsh, unyielding book for the screen, Hillcoat and screenwriter Joe Penhall pull their punches the slightest degree and thus too much. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Hillcoat gives [the postapocalypse] an unnerving solidity by focusing on the drab details of survival and linking them to the more hellish aspects of modern American life. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: My, but it's been a fine year for Armageddon. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: This is a willfully, skillfully crafted film with insufficient heart to the task it undertakes. It never fully connects us to love amid its ruins. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: The Road -- centered by Mortensen's typically physical but tempered performance -- is hard to watch. But it could have been much harder. Hillcoat isn't doing opera here, he's doing tragedy. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The Road, for all its vivid desolation, remains a curiously unmoving experience. Read more

Eric D. Snider, Film.com: This year's entry in the Movies You Admire and Respect but Don't Ever Want to Watch Again Sweepstakes. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: What's unnerving is that the end of the world was shot on location. Apparently, if you want to see doom, just go to New Orleans or Pittsburgh. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: What we've been given is no more than a reasonable facsimile, an honorable attempt at filming an unfilmable book. Read more

Miami Herald: Like McCarthy's book, The Road is dark, bleak and nightmarish but also stirring and beautiful and optimistic: As long as life remains, the movie argues, there is always hope. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Viggo Mortensen plays "The Man" (in the anonymous, Everyman sense, not in the "Stick it to the..." blaxploitation sense). Charlize Theron is "Wife." Kodi Smit-McPhee is "The Boy." And I'm The Audience, and I'm annoyed. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is intense and, yes, depressing -- and earns every minute that it rattles inside your head. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Zombieland was the same movie with laughs, but if you take away the comedy, what is left? Nothing, on a vast scale. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Viggo Mortensen gives the performance of his career in the faithfully rendered film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's heartbreaking apocalyptic novel The Road. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: I cannot think of another film this year that has stayed with me, its images of dread and fear -- and yes, perhaps hope -- kicking around like such a terrible dream. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The movie The Road is nowhere close to its literary sire, but it's probably the best one could hope for from a movie version. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The Road evokes the images and the characters of Cormac McCarthy's novel. It is powerful, but for me lacks the same core of emotional feeling. I'm not sure this is any fault of the filmmakers. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Unless you're far better at walling yourself off from identification than I am, you walk out in a state of untreated shock. Rather than thinking about the movie afterward, you wait for it to wear off. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: John Milton described hell as "darkness visible." That is the grim, mesmerizing world that director John Hillcoat creates here. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The Road has the signposts of an important film, but it lacks the diversions of an inviting trip. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: How could anything so bleak be so promising? Read more

Tom Huddlestone, Time Out: Hillcoat's movie is a resounding triumph. Stunning landscape photography sets the melancholy mood, and Nick Cave's wrenching score reinforces it. But it is the performances that ultimately hold the film together. Read more

Christopher Orr, The New Republic: Is the film too grim? Or not grim enough? In a perverse way, I fear it's both. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: While the film is not as resonant as the novel, it is an honorable adaptation, capturing the essence of the bond between father and son. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning, Oprah-endorsed, post-apocalyptic survivalist prose poem... was a quick, lacerating read. John Hillcoat's literal adaptation is, by contrast, a long, dull slog. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: The Road possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions. Read more