2009
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron
Director: John Hillcoat
Runtime: 119 Minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Rating: R

It’s both ironic and at the same time strangely appropriate that Australian director John Hillcoat should deliver this diligently faithful adaptation of Cormack McCarthy’s relentlessly bleak end-of-the-world parable so soon after the release of Roland Emmerich’s bloated pixel-fest 2012. Where as that disaster picture chose to depict the end of all things as bloated CGI spectacle, pre-occupied with the eye-candy of the event to the exclusion of almost everything else, McCarthy’s story makes the event itself almost an afterthought.

Through a story that begins after everything we know came to and end we find a nameless father (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit McPhee), who is maybe ten-years-old, on a relentless grueling death march through blackened forests and over barren hillside, hoping to reach the coast before starvation takes them. As they huddle together, filthy, amidst the freezing earth, we come know through dreams and flashbacks that at some point there was a cataclysm and everything was laid waste. It’s never made clear what exactly the event was, or whether it was caused by man or some cruel act of nature, and in the context of a hardscrabble existence driven by the unending search for scraps of food and shelter it simply doesn’t matter.

Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 11:07 pm and is filed under Drama, Feature Films, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.