The Road (Blu-Ray)
Introduction:
"The clocks stopped at one seventeen one morning. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calender for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. Each night is darker - beyond darkness. The world gets colder week by week as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and road gangs looking for fuel and food. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke. "
Overview & Plot:
Lets get the detail work out of the way: Director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) and writer Joe Penhall decided to create a movie based on a best selling novel by Cormac McCarthy (who also wrote No Country for Old Men). The film features a sparse cast consisting mainly of Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the main protagonists. Other noteworthy actors playing ancillary roles would include Charlize Theron (Monster), Robert Duvall (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now), and Guy Pearce (Memento).
I had mixed feelings going into this movie. At first I was excited for it but I quickly forgot about it. When I realized it had made it to DVD and Blu-Ray I quickly went out and snagged a copy. As I got ready to watch it my mixed feelings returned but in the end I have to say that I'm impressed. No, beyond impressed, awestruck would be a better adjective.
The premise of the movie is simple: in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event, the Man and the Boy walk down the road, struggling for survival, avoiding danger when ever possible. They have no plan or goal other than to keep moving until they find something. What the something is, we don't know just as we don't know much of the Man's life before this event. What little we do learn is through short flashbacks. He had a wife, but now she's gone. The Boy was born into this dead world and knows of nothing else. They have no names and few defining characteristics beyond their desperation. They have a pistol with only two bullets left and although they both want to live, if cornered, they're prepared to use those two bullets on each other.
That's it. That is the plot.
However, what really makes this movie so powerful is that desperation the pair share. When you see the world they live in, the horrors they have to face on a daily basis, and just how fucking bleak their lives are, that is what will grab you. That is what will haunt you. That is what will make your heart ache, your mood plummet, and maybe even cause your eyes to tear up. This movie is an emotional mind-fuck and it will leave you as drained, beaten, defeated as it does the Man and the Boy...but yet when everything is said and done there will be a tiny feeling of hope...of salvation...of a future. It is in that final defining moment that this movie shines.
Presentation:
The world John Hillcoat presents to us is one of muted colors. Browns, blacks, grays, and yellows make up the limited pallet but this is okay, this is what the director wanted the film to look like and it is devastatingly effective. Never before has our world looked so hopeless and cold.
Actual picture quality, thanks once again to the AVC MPEG-4 encoding was fairly decent but a far cry from ground breaking. It does the job but it isn't going to win any awards. Worth note for those that do watch it in Blu-Ray, edge ringing artifacts are prevalent in many of the movie's scenes, however whether that's the fault of the film-to-video transfer or extensive digital grading done to the movie in post production is up in the air. It's a minor annoyance but something easily overlooked.
On the audio side of things the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is a bit more impressive. The film's sound design by nature is actually very quiet overall with an emphasis on low-key music and eerie ambience. It's all part of the atmosphere of the movie and it works wonders in my opinion. Dialogue can be painfully quiet at times however sound effects are crisp when needed. For best results I recommend watching this in a very quiet environment with the sound at a fairly high level. If you have a decent surround system you should find this most enjoyable.
Specifications
Video
AVC MPEG-4
1080p
2010 / Color
111 Minutes
Widescreen
2.35:1
50GB
Dual Layer
Audio
English DTS
HD 5.1
Master Audio
N/A
N/A
N/A
Subtitles
Subtitled
In English
English SDH
N/A
N/A
Special Features:
Special Features on the version of the film I watched are minimal but included the standard Commentary, Deleted and Extended Scenes, "the Making of the Road" Featurette, and both of the Theatrical Trailers. There is nothing really worth your time here (the Commentary was especially poor) but actually this is okay. Your focus should be on the movie this time, not just the extra little goodies stuffed in to fill space.
Conclusion:
I've sat here for a while now and I honestly don't have the words needed to properly describe just how powerful this movie is. Frankly, this is one of the most disheartening films I've ever watched but the thing that truly amazes me about it, the thing that marks this movie as one of the best I've ever watched, was that even in that sea of bleak heart-wrenching despair there is still a tiny spark of hope. After all, you never know what you'll face down the road...
My Score: 10/10