Road To Perdition - He Was My Father!

(2002) ★★★★★

Perdition here means a place a father wants to take his son to, where they could seek protection, peace and extrication from what they've been through, where the father could get rid of his shady past and start anew, and the son could learn to be different from his old man, where they could have a nice and clean house by the sea, listen to the sound of waves and enjoy a simple happy life ever after. Sounds like a paradise huh? But sadly, paradise is not for sinners who've already got blood in their hands.

Tom Hanks plays Michael Sullivan, a kinda hitman for the crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman) during the Great Depression. John raises Mike up and treats him like his own son. But 'like his own son' is all that, coz John has a real son Connor (Daniel Craig), who always seems a bit rash and off when dealing with complicated matters. With no surprise, he turns a simple talk to one of John's employees into quite a bloody mess. And the worst part is, Mike's older son, Michael Sullivan Jr., who has been curious about what his old man's job really is, witnesses it all. And Connor, after being humiliated by his father, gets envious and mad and decides to take revenge on Mike. Revenge causes deaths. Deaths cause more pain and desperations. So as you may have guessed, the road to Perdition must be full of danger and bloodshed, right? No, it is not quite.

The road to Perdition is, as a matter of fact, pretty wide and straight, quiet and beautiful, though the sicko (Jude Law) going after Mike and his older son may make you chill and feel uncomfortable at times. This Academy Award winner for Best Cinematography makes me understand why a picture can be worth a thousand words. Every shot has a sense of beauty and poignancy that you wouldn't wanna turn your eyes away even for a second. And the score to this film is so outstanding that it seems to work like a reminder telling you when to get tensed up and sit back.

It may seem like a gangster movie to you, but to me it's more like a love story. The uneasy yet so hard to break father-son relationship is all that fascinates and saddens me as well. Michael Sullivan Jr., when asked if his father is a good man, if there's no good in him at all, always gives the same answer, 'he was my father'. Well, I guess there's no such a thing as a good man or a bad man. It all depends who is it to you. Don't you think?