Road to Perdition

Overflowing with melancholy and tragedy, Road to Perdition is one of the most somber gangster pictures ever made. more

Has the juice to get its hooks into you, knock you off balance and keep you that way for two hours. It's a triumph for director Sam Mendes. The passion and precision of his Road work is staggering. more

Mendes, in only his second feature (following the Oscar-winning "American Beauty"), has told this surprisingly resonant story with the potent, unrelenting fatalism of a previously unknown Greek myth. more

A truly majestic visual tone poem. more

This movie would be worth feting in any season. It's wrenching but never manipulative, stoic but never dull, exhausting but never wearying.

Sam Mendes' much-anticipated second effort after his Oscar-winning "American Beauty" finds him working in a very different key while displaying an even more pronounced attentiveness to tone, genre variations and artistic niceties. more

It's a genteel film with a gun in its pocket, but it's also a film with a universal chord of feeling that keeps welling up from the dark surfaces and violent byways of the plot-and a final confession that both warms the heart and chills the blood. more

The movie misfires: It's numbingly cold and soulless, and the zeitgeist stays far beyond its reach. But it's so visually striking you almost don't notice, its relentlessly somber mood has a certain masochistic appeal and, while hardly a career-redefining performance, Hanks is as winning as ever. more

This dark, almost mythic heart is what makes the film such an emotionally rich experience. more

Results are classy entertainment with little to interest women viewers but very shrewdly and cleverly put together, and probably more rewarding in long-range terms if you invest in Fox or Dreamworks than if you actually see the movie. more

Such an amazing movie and great adaption. The acting was perfect and the directing was precise and looked extremely polished. The visual style was beautiful, especially with no cgi aids. It is a classically told story about morality and revenge. more

This is a different kind of gangster movie, colder somehow, and less family-oriented. Mendes' signature, I think, is to evoke a mood. And there's this permanent melancholy that kind of envelops all characters and sceneries. But moods don't make movies and the story itself is not the most interesting. more

Michael Sullivan: He murdered Annie and Peter! John Rooney: There are only murderers in this room! Michael! Open your eyes! This is the life we chose, the life we lead. And there is only one guarantee: none of us will see heaven. Michael Sullivan: Michael could. John Rooney: Then do everything that you can to see that that happens. Director Sam Mendes' follow up to American Beauty proves to be one of the best looking movies that I've seen. Based on a comic book of the same name, the story involves the Irish and Italian mob, during Prohibition era. Taking place in 1931 Chicago area, a... more

Tom Hanks gives a teriffic performance. Paul Newman is marvelous. Jude Law gives a devilishly charming performance. Director, Sam Mendes has crafted another absolute triumph. A great and fine film. One of the finest crime dramas in years. Has some values of The Godfather and goes back to the old school roots of gangster films. Stunning, sharp, thrilling and powerfully moving. Beautifully performed and expertly crafted. Riveting, breathtaking and extroadinary. more

This suspense-filled story of hitman Michael Sullivan, directed by Sam Mendes, has as much style and cinematic brilliance as his American Beauty, though it is much darker. Sullivan (Tom Hanks), the adoptive son of John Rooney (Paul Newman), is a cold-blooded killer working for his crime boss "father" in the winter of 1931, when his own twelve-year-old son, Mike Jr., inadvertently witnesses a "hit" in which his father participates. Subsequently, the Sullivans, father and son, take off for Chicago to meet with Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci), underworld lieutenant to Al Capone. Mike Sullivan,... more

Sam Mendes' "The Road to Perdition" is a film about family: extended, brother against brother, father and sons and ultimately father against sons. It's about the world of Men in much the same tradition as "East of Eden," which it thematically resembles. Mendes tackles big ideas here: the sanctity of the family, a father's love of family, a father's right to protect his family and a natural versus an adopted son's place in a family (the right of succession). But Mendes uses the small details of life to develop these themes so that his lofty ideas have a pervasive as well as persuasive... more