The Road is a very bleak, very quiet story of a father and son trying to make it to a better, warmer location after some unnamed cataclysm has turned the earth into a bitter cold, gray place, and while many of the remaining people have become murderous, cannibalistic scavengers. Sounds like a zombie movie, but it isn’t played that way. Instead it is a painful journey where you really want them to make it, even though you’re not entirely sure what they are moving towards. You want them to find food in a world that has been picked over for years before the film begins. But there are no superheroes to save the day, just a normal father trying the best he can to keep his son safe for an unknown future.

I think there are some great books that defy a great adaptation. The Road may be one of those books. Or it may be that they chose to stay too close to the book. It is depressingly realistic about a world that is dying without much hope. What worked in the book doesn’t serve as well in a movie. Having said that, I’d be interested to know how someone who has not read the book sees the movie. I think it is very effective most of the time, though the music is intrusive in places. Viggo Mortensen is wonderful as the haunted father and Robert Duvall does a very effective cameo. It is a good movie, just not a great one.

I would highly recommend reading the book.

And here is an interesting article with the writer about his screening of the movie for Cormac McCarthy.