Can Mendes Make It Two For Two With ‘Perdition’?

Comic book movies are all the rage right now in Hollywood. You want proof? Spider-Man has become the biggest hit of the year, besting the early favorite, Star Wars: Episode II. Trailers for next year’s crop of comic book adaptations, including Daredevil, The Hulk, and the sequel to X-Men, have fans jumping for joy in anticipation. Internet chatter is wildly building after the recent announcement that director Wolfgang Petersen (Air Force One, In the Line of Fire) will helm a live-action Batman vs Superman movie. Excelsior, indeed!

Despite all the hoopla over these four-color characters, very little ink has been spilled over the fact the high-caliber entry, Road to Perdition, which opened last week to wide acclaim and even some early Oscar buzz, is based on a comic book. Although, it should be noted, when I was a full-fledged comic fanboy myself, I would have scorned the phrase “comic book” and insisted on the term, “graphic novel.” But any which way you cut it (or name it), this is quite the unorthodox choice for director Sam Mendes, who is embarking on his sophomore cinematic effort after his very first try, a little film called American Beauty, walked away with five Oscars, including wins for Best Picture and Best Director. Can Mendes make it two for two?

Besides having Oscar-winner Mendes at the helm, the Depression-era set Road to Perdition boasts the pedigree of Academy Award winners Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and cinematographer Conrad L. Hall. Together they give us a movie of brooding intensity, a film perhaps more interested in rich imagery and dense emotional tone and resonance than in complexity of plot. In this way, perhaps, it is the most “comic book” movie of them all: Road to Perdition is a stately drama whose strength lies not in witty dialogue or clever plot twists, but in the images and actions on screen. It is truly a graphic novel come to life.

Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan, an intimidating enforcer for and an employee of unwavering loyalty to Irish mob boss John Rooney (Newman) in 1930s Illinois. Sullivan’s familial-like devotion to Rooney is trumped only by his commitment to his real family, wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and two sons Peter (Liam Aiken) and Michael Jr (Tyler Hoechlin). It is through Michael Junior’s voice that part of the film is narrated, and he becomes a key figure in the story after he stows away in his father’s automobile and witnesses a brutal shooting carried out by his father and Rooney’s unhinged son, Conor (Daniel Craig). His knowledge puts his family at risk and leads to a horrific act that changes him and his relationship to his stoic father.

Although Road to Perdition features top-notch work by Hanks and Newman, both of whom are going against their nice-guy types (Hanks is effectively convincing as a frightening bear of a man, nicknamed “The Angel of Death,” and Newman carries considerable weight as a feared mob boss), the film is also notable for the restraint of its performances. Aside from Jude Law, who nearly steals all his scenes as Maguire, the Reporter, the one very eccentric character in the bunch, Mendes assembles a cast that is very modulated and well serves his purpose of crafting a sort of elegiac tone poem that also resourcefully uses sound effects (to build tension), music (a terrific score by Thomas Newman adds much to the film’s tone) and some haunting scenes of violence to accomplish a visually and aurally effective period drama.

Road to Perdition is rated R for language and violence. Though it is only occasionally graphic (especially toward the climax), Mendes and crew truly convey the horror of that violence as well as its effects.