Thursday, July 11, 2002 | 11:47 a.m.
Road to Perdition
Starring: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stanley Tucci, Tyler Hoechlin
Director: Sam Mendes
Screenwriter: David Self
Rated: R contains violence and language
Running time: 119 minutes
Grade: A+
HOUSTON - "Road to Perdition is adapted from a graphic novel, and without having read it, we cannot know whether it is great literature. We can say categorically, however, that it has yielded a great film.
This powerful gangster story set in 1931 also is, above all, a moving drama about fathers and sons. It stars Tom Hanks - America's Everyman, the Jimmy Stewart of our time - as a hired killer. This sounds like another stunt role ("See Hanks Act Opposite a Soccer Ball!"), but it isn't. "Road to Perdition" is a textured, nuanced film in which Hanks, as good as he is, doesn't overwhelm.
To say Hanks isn't even the first person who comes to mind as a likely Oscar winner isn't to diminish his achievement. It's just that everyone, both before and behind the camera, excels.
Hank's character, Michael Sullivan, is a mob enforcer in an unnamed city. Paul Newman plays the mob boss, John Rooney - the most powerful man in town - as a charming codger with a flinty core.
Rooney loves Sullivan the way a father loves a son, which drives his natural son, Connor (Daniel Craig), wild with jealousy. Connor's rage sets the story in motion. It moves from there to a preordained end with the stately simplicity of Greek tragedy.
Sullivan has two sons of his own, the oldest of which, 12-year-old Mike (Tyler Hoechlin), also feels unloved. He adores his dad yet is afraid of him.
We see the aloof, chilly father through his son's eyes, literally. We catch our first glimpse when Mike, sent to summon his father for a meal, walks haltingly down a dark hall. Through the bedroom door, he spies his dad handling a pistol and stops.
Later, Mike witnesses something no child should see. Again, we see this from his point of view. By putting us in the child's shoes, the film compels the audience to experience the same conflicted emotions that Mike does as he realizes the two men he loves - his father and Rooney - do bad things.
Mike will once more creep down the same dark hall, this time filled with even greater dread. The father's sins have brought pain and suffering down upon his house, and nothing will ever be the same. Issues of loyalty and honor loom large in this tale. But to whom does one owe loyalty if not to one's own blood?
To call this the greatest gangster film since "The Godfather" would be an overstatement, though not by much. It is, however, the most brilliant work in this genre since the 1984 uncut version of Sergio Leone's flawed but staggering "Once Upon a Time in America." "Road to Perdition," a less sprawlingly ambitious movie, is without major flaws.
Even the one time Sullivan acts foolishly - allowing a nemesis to live - can be explained away as a bad choice made in the heat of battle (even though we know it was done for the convenience of the plot). We overlook it because the screenplay is otherwise so shapely, so perfect, right down to a phrase about their sons uttered by both Sullivan and Rooney at different times.
"I know," both men say when presented with evidence of their sons' essential natures. It is a simple yet eloquent statement of acceptance that means two very different things.
The script by David Self, a Texas native, has been so finely honed that the story can change directions in a heartbeat. At a wake in Rooney's huge home, over which he grandly presides, the dead man's brother delivers a speech. It shifts gears midway, forcing us to re-evaluate what we're seeing and nudging the story onto a path heretofore unseen. It is but one of many unexpected turns in a tale as mercurial as the moods of its hard-drinking, complex characters.
The biggest shift occurs when Sullivan and Mike are forced to flee for their lives, pursued by the creepiest killer this side of Hannibal Lecter. Jude Law, with mimelike physicality, portrays a hit man who moonlights as a crime photographer, taking pictures of his victims as they lie dying.
Cinematographer Conrad Hall has concocted incredibly complex lighting schemes for this shadowy tale of betrayal. It's amazing the extent to which the photography adds gravity and emotional shading to what is, at heart, a straightforward tale.
It's impossible not to notice the beauty and artistry of Hall's work, yet each shot accentuates the emotional journey of the characters, which also is the narrative's focus.
Sam Mendes, an acclaimed British stage director, has made only one previous movie, "American Beauty." This film shows that "Beauty" wasn't a fluke. It won most of the major awards in 1999, and it's easy to picture "Road to Perdition" doing the same. In a flash, Mendes has become one of the most exciting filmmakers working, bringing with him stage-honed methods, preternatural confidence and exacting vision.
On "Beauty," Mendes worked to improve an already impressive script by Alan Ball (who went on to create HBO's "Six Feet Under"). Then, after he'd shot and assembled the film, he shocked his more experienced collaborators by throwing out much of it and extensively reworking it in the editing room.
"It almost killed me when I saw it the first time," said Hall in 2000 of "American Beauty," which he also shot. "It was a terribly disturbing experience because it was so different from what we'd shot."
Nevertheless, Hall later realized Mendes knew exactly what he was doing.
He did this time, too.
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