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The Road
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Hillcoat
Screenplay by	Joe Penhall
Produced by	Nick Wechsler Steve Schwartz Paula Mae Schwartz
Starring	Viggo Mortensen Kodi Smit-McPhee Robert Duvall Charlize Theron Guy Pearce
Narrated by	Viggo Mortensen
Cinematography	Javier Aguirresarobe
Edited by	Jon Gregory
Music by	Nick Cave Warren Ellis
Production company	2929 Productions
Distributed by	Dimension Films The Weinstein Company (USA) FilmNation Entertainment (international) Icon Productions (UK/Australia)
Release date	November 25, 2009 (limited)
Running time	113 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$25 million
Box office	$27,635,236

The Road is a 2009 post-apocalyptic drama film directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 novel of the same name by American author Cormac McCarthy, the film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Filming took place in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Oregon. The film received a limited release in North American cinemas from November 25, 2009, and was released in UK cinemas on January 4, 2010.

Plot

A man and his young son struggle to survive after an unspecified cataclysm has apparently killed most plant and animal life. Civilization has collapsed, reducing the survivors to scavenging and even cannibalism. They search for supplies as they travel south on a road to the coast in the hope it will be warmer. The man carries a revolver, but has only two bullets.

A series of flashbacks reveals that the man's wife had given birth to the child shortly after the catastrophe. She eventually committed suicide.

After shooting a member of a gang who inadvertently stumbles upon them, the man is left with only one bullet. Later, exploring a large mansion, the pair discover prisoners in the basement; serving as a food supply for their absent captors. When the armed cannibals return, the man and his son hide. With discovery imminent, the man prepares to shoot his son, but the cannibals are distracted by the captives, and the pair get away.

Further down the road, they discover an underground shelter full of canned food and supplies. They feast, bathe and groom themselves. When the man hears rummaging noises around the entrance to the shelter, he decides they must leave. They later encounter a nearly-blind old man (Duvall) on the road. The son persuades his reluctant father to feed him something.

Arriving at the coast, the man goes to scavenge what he can from a beached ship. He leaves his son to keep watch, but the boy falls asleep and they are robbed of everything. After they chase the thief down, the father takes everything from him, even his clothes. When the boy remains upset about what is essentially a death sentence, the father relents. They go back, but cannot find the thief, so they leave behind his clothes and a can of food.

As they pass through a ruined town, the man is shot in his right leg with an arrow. He kills his ambusher with a flare gun he found on the ship, but is so weakened by the wound that they have to abandon their cart and most of their possessions. When his condition deteriorates, he realizes he is dying. He again emphasizes to his son the values of self-preservation and humanity.

After the father dies, the son is approached by a man who gives him the choice of joining him, a woman, their two children and their dog. The family had followed the pair for some time out of concern for the boy. The child joins them after being assured they are the "good guys".

Cast

In the film, none of the characters are given a name, and the credits simply give their role in place of a name.

• Viggo Mortensen as Man: Mortensen described the interaction of the father with his son thus: "They're on this difficult journey, and the father is basically learning from the son."
• Kodi Smit-McPhee as Boy: At the London Film Festival, Mortensen explained that Smit-McPhee was one of four finalists for the part, all of whom then read with him. Smit-McPhee was unanimously chosen, in particular because he seemed youthful, innocent and yet wise beyond his years
• Charlize Theron as Woman, the Man's wife (appears in a series of flashbacks): Theron was a fan of the book and had worked with producer Nick Wechsler on the 2000 film The Yards. The woman has a larger role in the film than in the book, with Hillcoat stating "I think it's fine to depart from the book as long as you maintain the spirit of it."
• Robert Duvall as Old Man (gives his name as Ely; the only proper name for any character in the film)
• Guy Pearce as Veteran, a father wandering with his family
• Molly Parker as Motherly Woman, the Veteran's wife
• Michael Kenneth Williams as Thief
• Garret Dillahunt as Gang Member

Production

In November 2006, producer Nick Wechsler used independent financing to acquire film rights to adapt the 2006 novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy. When Wechsler had watched John Hillcoat's 2005 film The Proposition after reading The Road, the producer decided to pursue Hillcoat to direct the film adaptation. Wechsler described Hillcoat's style: "There was something beautiful in the way John captured the stark primitive humanity of the West in that movie." In April 2007, Joe Penhall was hired to script the adapted screenplay. Wechsler and his fellow producers Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz planned to have a script and an actor cast to portray the father before pursuing a distributor for the film. By the following November, actor Viggo Mortensen had entered negotiations with the filmmakers to portray the father, though he was occupied with filming Appaloosa in New Mexico.

The film had a budget of USD 20 million. Filming began in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area in late February 2008, continuing for eight weeks before moving on to northwestern Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Oregon. Hillcoat preferred to shoot in real locations, saying "We didn't want to go the CGI world." Pennsylvania, where most of the filming took place, was chosen for its tax breaks and its abundance of locations that looked abandoned or decayed: coalfields, dunes, and run-down parts of Pittsburgh. Filming was also done at the 1892 amusement resort (Conneaut Lake Park) after one of the park's buildings (the Dreamland Ballroom) was destroyed in a fire in February 2008. The beaches of Presque Isle State Park in Erie, Pennsylvania were also used. Hillcoat also said of using Pittsburgh as a practical location, "It's a beautiful place in fall with the colors changing, but in winter, it can be very bleak. There are city blocks that are abandoned. The woods can be brutal." Filmmakers also shot scenes in parts of New Orleans that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and on Mount St. Helens in Washington. The Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike, a stretch of abandoned roadway between Hustontown and Breezewood, Pennsylvania, was used for much of the production.

Hillcoat sought to make the film faithful to the spirit of the book, creating "a world in severe trauma," although the circumstances of the apocalyptic event are never explained. Hillcoat said "That's what makes it more realistic, then it immediately becomes about survival and how you get through each day as opposed to what actually happened." Filmmakers took advantage of days with bad weather to portray the post-apocalyptic environment. Mark Forker, the director of special effects for the film, sought to make the landscape convincing, handling sky replacement and digitally removing greenery from scenes.

Release

The Road was originally scheduled to be released in November 2008. It was pushed back to be released in December, and then pushed back a second time to sometime in 2009. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio decided that the film would benefit from a longer post-production process and a less crowded release calendar. A new release date was scheduled for October 16, 2009. However, according to reports from Screen Rant and /Film, the Weinsteins had decided at the last minute to delay the film to November 25, 2009 as a possible move to make the film more of an Oscar contender, bumping their previous film set for that date, Rob Marshall's adaptation of the musical Nine (which was also predicted to be a huge awards contender) into December 2009.

The film had its world premiere in September 2009 at the Venice International Film Festival where it was in competition for the Golden Lion and Silver Lion prizes, and then at the Telluride Film Festival. It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The DVD and Blu-ray versions were released on May 17, 2010, in the UK, and May 25, 2010, in the United States.

Reception

The film currently holds a 75% Fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 196 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. It also has a score of 64/100 on Metacritic, based on 32 reviews, indicating generally positive reviews from critics.

A.O. Scott from At the Movies stated that while the film "...hits a few tinny, sentimental notes", he "...admire the craft and conviction of this film, and was impressed enough by the look and the performances to recommend that you see it." Peter Travers from Rolling Stone calls the film a "...haunting portrait of America as no country for old men or young..." He states that "... Hillcoat -- through the artistry of Mortensen and Smit-McPhee -- carries the fire of our shared humanity and lets it burn bright and true." Joe Morgenstern from the Wall Street Journal states that viewers have to "...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."

Esquire screened the film before it was released and called it "the most important movie of the year" and "a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel, a delicate and anachronistically loving look at the immodest and brutish end of us all. You want them to get there, you want them to get there, you want them to get there—and yet you do not want it, any of it, to end." IGN gave it four and a half out of a possible five stars, calling it "one of the most important and moving films to come along in a long time."

In an early review, The Guardian gave the film four stars out of five, describing it as "a haunting, harrowing, powerful film," with Mortensen "perfectly cast" as the Man. Roger Ebert awarded the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, praising Mortensen and Smit-McPhee's work, but he did criticize the film for not being as powerful as the book. Luke Davies of The Monthly described the film as "gorgeous, in a horrible way, but its greater coolness and distance shows just how difficult it can be to translate to screen the innate psychic warmth of great literature," and suggested the film's flaws "might have to do with the directorial point of view—it all feels too detached, in a way that the book in its searing intimacy does not," concluding that the film has "too much tableau and not enough acting."

A review in Adbusters disapproved of the product placement in the film, but, as noted by Hillcoat, the references to Coca-Cola appear in the novel, and the company was in fact reluctant about the product being portrayed in the film. The Washington Post said the film "is one long dirge, a keening lamentation marking the death of hope and the leeching of all that is bright and good from the world...It possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions." Tom Huddleston from Time Out calls the film "...as direct and unflinching an adaptation as one could reasonably hope for." He calls it "...certainly the bleakest and potentially the least commercial product in recent Hollywood history." He calls the movie a "...resounding triumph", noting its "stunning landscape photography sets the melancholy mood, and Nick Cave’s wrenching score..." Sam Adams from the Los Angeles Times notes that while "...Hillcoat certainly provides the requisite seriousness, the movie lacks... an underlying sense of innocence, a sense that, however far humanity has sunk, there is at least some chance of rising again." Kyle Smith from the New York Post states that "Zombieland was the same movie with laughs, but if you take away the comedy, what is left? Nothing, on a vast scale." J. Hoberman from the Village Voice states that while "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." Jake Coyle from the Associated Press stated that "dapting a masterpiece such as The Road is a thankless task, but the film doesn't work on its own merits."

Awards and nominations

References

1. ^ "The Road (2009)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved February 8, 2011.
2. "NME". NME. November 11, 2009. Retrieved February 4, 2010.
3. ^ "'The Road' Delayed... Yet Again". Screen Rant. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
4. "A New Poster for The Road". Dreadcentral.com. Retrieved February 4, 2010.
5. ^ Vancheri, Barbara (April 24, 2008). "Filming wraps up on post-apocalyptic The Road". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
6. ^ McGrath, Charles (May 27, 2008). "At World's End, Honing a Father-Son Dynamic". The New York Times. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
7. "'Road' actor finding celebrity at a young age". Toronto Sun. Retrieved March 31, 2010.
8. Siegel, Tatiana (January 14, 2008). "Charlize Theron hits The Road". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
9. ^ "First Look: 'The Road'". USA Today. Retrieved August 7, 2008.
10. Fleming, Michael (November 7, 2006). "Road to bigscreen". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
11. Fleming, Michael (April 1, 2007). "Penhall paves Road". Variety. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
12. Schwartz, Missy (October 7, 2007). "Viggo Mortensen May Hit The Road". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
13. Sullivan, James (October 19, 2008). "A fork (and a bump) in The Road". Boston Globe. Retrieved January 1, 2009.
14. "Mortensen, Theron on The Road to Pittsburgh". USA Today. January 16, 2008. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
15. ^ Bowles, Scott (August 6, 2008). "Sneak peek: The Road is fiction, but the bleak scenery is real". USA Today. Retrieved August 7, 2008.
16. Zeitchik, Steven (October 18, 2008). "Road rerouted into 2009 release schedule". The Hollywood Reporter. Reuters. Retrieved January 1, 2009.
17. "Dimension sets October release date for The Road". Sci Fi Wire. May 1, 2009. Retrieved May 1, 2009.
18. Lambert, Christine (2009). "Photos of The Road premiere at TIFF 2009". Retrieved November 26, 2009.
19. Foster, Dave (2010). "The Road (R2/UK BD) in May". Retrieved May 15, 2010.
20. Barton, Steve (2010). "The Road Leads to DVD and Blu-ray in May". Retrieved March 23, 2010.
21. ^ "The Road Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixter. Retrieved June 9, 2013.
22. "The Road". Metacritic. Retrieved November 28, 2009.
23. Chiarella, Tom (May 12, 2009). "The Road Is the Most Important Movie of the Year". Esquire. Retrieved May 13, 2009.
24. James O'Connor (November 19, 2009). "The Road AU Review". IGN. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
25. Xan Brooks (September 3, 2009). "Venice film festival: The Road". The Guardian. Retrieved March 7, 2010.
26. Ebert, Roger (November 24, 2009). "The Road". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
27. "Lost Boys: Jacques Audiard's 'A Prophet' and John Hillcoat's 'The Road'". The Monthly. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
28. Berman, Sarah (2010). "The Year in Film". Adbusters (87). {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
29. MacKenzie Fegan (November 25, 2009). "The Road's John Hillcoat on Cannibals, Product Placement, and the Apocalypse". flavorwire.com. Retrieved November 27, 2009.
30. Ann Hornaday (November 29, 2009). "'The Road': Been there, done this post-apocalyptic reckoning". The Washington Post.
31. http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-road-2009

External links

• Official website
• The Road at IMDb
• The Road at Rotten Tomatoes
• Template:Amg movie
• The Road at Box Office Mojo

• 2009 films
• 2000s drama films
• American drama films
• Cannibalism in fiction
• Cormac McCarthy
• Dimension Films films
• English-language films
• Films based on novels
• Films set in the United States
• Films shot in Louisiana
• Films shot in Oregon
• Films shot in Pennsylvania
• Post-apocalyptic films
• Road movies
• The Weinstein Company films