Hopefully I'll get around to seeing it this weekend. Anyone else gonna try to see it this weekend?

im gonna try and see peoples reaction to it first before i go and see it but i definately want to.

The early reviews that I've heard are promising. Some are calling this movie the best mob flick since "Goodfellas".

Its also been labled as "The best Crime Drama since The Godfather". Cant wait to check it out. Anyone here seen it yet?

So Tom Hanks is in that. I kinda want to see but not all that much. :rolleyes:

Never mind i never new much about it until now I REALLY WANNA SEE IT!!!!!!

This impressive, uncompromising work is many things - a period crime film, a dark meditation on the relationships between fathers and sons and, of course, a road movie - but it succeeds mostly as a haunting allegory about dying. The journey here is life and, no matter what route or turns one might take, it leads to the same conclusion, the same end.

Mendes and his brilliant cinematographer, Conrad Hall, both of whom won Oscars in 1999 for "American Beauty," bring a fiercely handsome, funereal quality to their collaboration this time out, a quality that would make their film striking no matter when it was released but makes it particularly auspicious smack in the midst of summer-movie escapism. But "Road to Perdition" also represents a kind of escapism - one for mature, adventurous audiences who want to be transported not only to another time and place, but also to another level of thought and perception. It invites us to see the familiar - those crime films, father-son sagas and road movies - in a decidedly different way, one that's bleaker but not necessarily unpleasant. The film is quiet, threatening and unforgettable.

For Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks, reinventing himself for the screen once again) and his son, Michael Jr. (newcomer Tyler Hoechlin), the road they are traveling will take them to relatives who live in Perdition, a small town somewhere in rural Illinois where Sullivan plans on depositing Michael Jr. - hopefully for a better life. But Sullivan himself is on the road to perdition in the literal sense. A cold-blooded hit man operating in 1931, at the height of the Depression, Sullivan is in the throes of his final spiritual ruin. He's on the road to damnation and he's hoping, perhaps, to regain his soul along the way. It is telling, therefore, that this film would open with a wake. The life being celebrated is a man who somehow had connections to John Rooney (Paul Newman), a shady Chicago fixture who employs Sullivan and also serves as his father figure. Sullivan, an orphan, was raised and groomed by Rooney for his vague business, much to the chagrin of Rooney's own son, the hopeless Connor (Daniel Craig). The funeral doesn't go well. A relative of the deceased makes a fuss, hurling some accusations at Rooney who, in turn, orders Sullivan and Connor to take the man aside the next day and "talk" to him.

Up to this point, Michael Jr., who is not as close to his father as his younger brother is, gets curious about his dad's mysterious job. He stows away in his father's car when Sullivan and Connor go off to do business, and when Connor loses control and shoots the man he and Sullivan were simply supposed to talk to, Michael Jr. witnesses it. It's a rude awakening for the boy, but also, suddenly, everything makes sense about his father's distant, stoic ways. His dad kills people. When Sullivan realizes what Michael Jr. has witnessed, he makes matters worse by swearing the boy to secrecy to protect the undeserving Rooney.

Their trip to Perdition is precipitated when Rooney puts out a hit on his supposedly beloved surrogate son, Sullivan - and when Connor goes to Sullivan's house and mistakenly kills Michael Jr.'s brother as well as Sullivan's wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh). The sequence in which Sullivan realizes what is happening - that Rooney wants him rubbed out - is a model of subtlety and nuance, horrific in a quiet, truly troubling way. Hanks - whose acting style throughout is to do as little as possible - in incomparable in this scene.

Sullivan's plan is to take Michael Jr. to their family in Perdition and then go off and settle the score with Rooney for his vicious betrayal. But along the way, he has to stop off to confer with Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci), who oversees operations for honcho crime boss Al Capone, under whom Rooney and his Irish mob work. Sullivan needs Capone's backing to move ahead and, using the impressive work he's done for Rooney as leverage, he even offers to do hits for Capone in return for the favor. But Sullivan learns he can trust no one - and that his personal plight is putting his sole surviving child in jeopardy - as he becomes aware that the mob has put another hit man on his trail, one posing as a crime-scene photographer (Jude Law in a truly creepy, memorable turn). An overwhelming sense of fatalism permeates this movie. It is what sets it apart from other mob-and-family works such as Francis Ford Coppola's big-screen "The Godfather" saga and David Chase's small-screen "The Sopranos" series.

Michael Sullivan is at the point of no return at the very start of the film, having lost everything, including his soul - everything, that is, except Michael Jr. But something good comes out of their dread-filled trip: They bond - and, for better or worse, Michael Jr. finally gets to know his father and musters up a grudging respect for him.

You won't find acting much better than the performances turned in here by Hanks, Hoechlin, Newman, Law and Craig - acting that's as bruised as the dark browns, grays, reds and greens that color the film's visuals. I know that it's about six months premature to make such a declaration, but "Road to Perdition" is the best film of the year.

I'm going tomorrow, I'll make sure and give you guys my thoughts.

-Lucky

You can find a long (>4 pgs) review + interviews in today's
NY Times (free online registration).

The Godfather is mentioned several times. Here's a short extract :

RICK LYMAN With a movie like "Road to Perdition," which comes out of one of the venerable Hollywood genres, the gangster film, how do you approach it to make sure it's fresh?

SAM MENDES That's me then, is it? Well, I think that you've got to have a story that isn't a conventional gangster story for a start. But in my case I just try and give the lie to some of the received notions about gangsters. You decide early on that you're not going to have the spats and the pinstriped suits and the fedoras and the gum chewing and the toothpick in the side of the mouth and the flipping coins and all of those things.

At the same time, you don't think, "I can't do that because someone else already did it." You do it because it's what suits the material. You take your cue from the material. Does that make sense?

TOM HANKS Yeah, I think so. Let's face it, the gangster genre has become the stuff of parody. I was trying to think of my cultural references — other than "The Godfather," which isn't really fair to say, because it's to the crime world what "Citizen Kane" is to the newspaper world — and the top references I came up with were an old Carol Burnett sketch with Harvey Korman and that episode on "Star Trek" where Kirk and Spock go down to the gangster planet.

MENDES I've seen that.

HANKS So that you almost have to look at it and say, well, if you take out all the iconographic images of the bootleggers and the cars and the machine guns, can the genre really stand on its own anymore?

LYMAN The use of language in the film is different from most gangster films. There is none of the wise-guy patter one associates with the genre.

MENDES I felt the story held its meaning in the images and in the silences between the characters. So that leads you toward a more spare kind of dialogue and away from the kind of noirish, fast-talking gangster speak. I think the thing most often said to me by both of these gentlemen was, do we really need to say this? Isn't this already clear? Because you want the audience to lean into the film for the first 30 or 40 minutes, not lean back. You want to lead them with clues. You want a mystery.

well boys what i want to know is; is it good? is it worth the cash?

FYI, in France it will be released on Sept. 11th...

Its was a good,dark movie.