 The Road 
 
 November 24, 2009 
 
 Cast & Credits The Man Viggo Mortensen 
 
 The Boy Kodi Smit-McPhee 
 
 Wife Charlize Theron 
 
 Old Man Robert Duvall 
 
 The Veteran Guy Pearce 
 
 
 
 Dimension Films presents a film directed by John Hillcoat. If it were not, "The Road" might be just another film of sci-fi apocalypse. The one great film of his work is the Coens' "No Country for Old Men," but it began with an extraordinary character and surrounded him with others. (Even at that, it has taken a year for the Weinsteins, the producers and distributors of “The Road,’’ to get the nerve to release the film.) Flashback scenes star Charlize Theron as the wife and mother of the two in earlier, sunnier days.
– It’s a thankless job adapting a literary darling like The Road, and, sure enough, director John Hillcoat hasn’t gotten much thanks. Critics have mixed feelings about the bleak post-apocalyptic film. Here’s what they’re saying: Despite good acting, the film is merely adequate, “an honorable attempt at filming an unfilmable book,” writes Kenneth Turan of the LA Times. “To do more than horrify and depress us, The Road is in need of a finer sensibility.” A devoted Cormac McCarthy fan, Roger Ebert wrestles with his review. “It is powerful, but for me lacks the same core of emotional feeling,” he writes. “I'm not sure this is any fault of the filmmakers.” The movie can only “dully visualize horrors the best writers hint at,” says Ty Burr of the Boston Globe. Still, it’s a “welcome rebuke to the happy-face apocalypse of 2012.” “The Road isn't a masterpiece,” writes Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But it stuck with him, “its images of dread and fear kicking around like such a terrible dream.”