Road to Perdition ***** (2002, Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Tyler Hoechlin, Daniel Craig, Ciarân Hinds, Stanley Tucci, Dylan Baker, Jude Law) – Classic Movie Review 234

A haunting, unmissable gangster movie with a dazzling surface, director Sam Mendes’s 2002 follow-up to his American Beauty has got class written all over every frame of it. It is superbly crafted with beautiful performances, particularly by Tom Hanks and Paul Newman.

David Self’s sizzling screenplay is based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner, which is itself based on the story of a real-life enforcer for mobster John Looney (changed to Rooney for the film).

Tom Hanks gives his all in a complex, tricky role as Michael ‘Mike’ Sullivan, a hitman in 1931 Depression-era Chicago, who runs for his life with his young son Michael Jr (Tyler Hoechlin) when his wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and other son (Liam Aiken) are murdered.

The trouble is that Michael Jr has been a witness to a killing Sullivan has done. Sullivan and the kid are running for safety but Sullivan is also out for revenge on those who betrayed him.

It’s a bit of a shock, but that nice Tom Hanks really finds it in him to play a desperate, ruthless assassin convincingly. That’s what I meant  by a tricky role.

In a posh cast that also includes Daniel Craig (as Newman’s son), Ciarân Hinds, Stanley Tucci and Dylan Baker, Jude Law is perfectly creepy as a relentless, rodent-like contract killer, Harlen Maguire, who is on the trail of Sullivan and Jr. The Maguire character is one of Self’s additions to the story, and a very helpful one, adding a lot of complexity and tension. It puts on a whole extra layer to what might have been an otherwise thinnish plot.

But this film belongs to the old guys. Oscar-nominated Paul Newman (then aged 77) is brilliantly chilling in his best role in a decade as John Rooney, the Irish crime boss Hanks’s Sullivan works for and regards as a father figure. It proved to be Newman’s last cinema movie appearance before his death in 2008 (though he was the voice of Doc Hudson in Cars in 2006). He was Oscar nominated as Best Supporting Actor.

And (I said at the time) if Conrad L Hall (aged 76) doesn’t win an Oscar for his eye-popping cinematography, I’ll eat my fedora (luckily for me, he did!). He accessed the look of Edward Hopper’s paintings as visual inspiration. It is his last movie and it is dedicated to him. Hall died before the movie came out. His nomination and Oscar were posthumous. His son Conrad W Hall (also a cinematographer) accepted the Oscar on his behalf.

Thomas Newman’s score and Dennis Gassner’s art direction were also deservedly nominated for their distinguished contributions to the success of the film. But it was the film’s only Oscar win.

The scene of Sullivan’s car driving into main street Chicago was filmed with 120 vintage cars early one quiet Sunday morning.

Mendes has a cameo as one of John Rooney’s bodyguards.

Max Allan Collins’s sequel book Road to Purgatory still awaits filming.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 234

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Tyler Hoechlin all grown up.