Road to Perdition Transcends Genres Labels

I have trouble with favorites. I cannot choose a favorite flavor ice cream, song or even a favorite shirt. But ask me what my favorite movie is, every time I will say Road to Perdition without hesitating. It is one of the few films I've seen over 10 times that I can still enjoy like it was the first time.

The film centers around the journey of a young boy, Michael Sullivan, Jr. (played by Tyler Hoechlin), across 1920s Illinois with his father, Mike Sullivan (Tom Hanks), a hit-man in a community of gangsters in the lower echelon of Al Capone's organization. Or, another way to watch is through the eyes of a hit-man father attempting to secure for his son a life he never knew for himself. Or, watch for the juxtaposition of father and son relationships: the Sullivans versus the Rooneys.

The story is based in Chicago during Prohibition. Mr. Rooney (Paul Newman) runs a profiteering racket, employing Mike Sullivan as an enforcer with a tommy gun. When young Michael Sullivan witnesses Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig) killing a good man, it leads to the death of his mother and younger brother. This begins, for Sullivan, a journey to protect his son from the hit-man, Maguire (Jude Law), even as he redeems himself from his own life of crime.

One of the beautiful aspects to Perdition is how it is open to multiple viewings. Sophomore director Sam Mendes skillfully took the source material, a graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner, and played with it, molding it until it became perfectly realized for cinema. More recent graphic novel adaptations like Sin City and The Watchmen have taken the style of the novel and supplanted it onto the screen. Visually, those films are crisp even in their grit; Perdition is crisp in story even as it fills the screen with compelling and dramatic visuals.

Mendes has created a film beyond any niche. The story centers heavily around gangsters, but this is not a gangster film. It is set within the 1930s, yet neither is it a period piece. Much of the film takes place on the road heading to an aunt's house in Perdition, but that does not make it a road trip movie. Like Hitchcock, Mendes manages to work within a genre even as he is transcending it.

Newman as Mr. Rooney pulls off his last on-screen performance with all the skill acquired from decades in the business. Few actors would be able to create a character who despises his son, Connor, while he simultaneously works to protect him. Newman does so without flinching, and even throws in the mix a grand loyalty to his favorite employee, Sullivan. There is a scene in the basement of a church where Newman talks with Sullivan for the first time since Connor murdered his wife and son. During their talk, we see his loyalties to his son and Sullivan collide. He is a man stuck in the middle, and only someone of Newman's breed could believably strike that pose.

For his part, Hanks plays his cards close to the chest. Playing Sullivan with a quiet resolve and a detached affection for his family, even his wife, destroys the natural affection we hold toward him. Once that's done, he spends the rest of the film winning back our affection as he effectively wins over his son.

One of the best scenes in the film is between Hanks and Law, in one of his most disgusting roles. Both are sitting at a diner in the middle of nowhere. Maguire (Law) knows Sullivan is the man he has been ordered to kill, and Sullivan suspects Maguire is more than he says. The tension in the scene could only be crafted from someone who knows which scenes need slower pacing and fewer camera cuts. Mendes knows how.

In fact, it seems he's learned from the best. Hitchcock once said he films his love scenes like murders and his murders like love scenes. Lacking any love scenes, we only have the murders to examine. In the most memorable scene, near the end of the film, Mendes films a massacre without any noise other than the score. The cinematography in this scene make it stick in your memory if nothing else does. Perfect illumination in the center of action, with pitch blackness surrounding. All of the intimate details necessary to create a love-scene murder.

Despite all the greatness that resides within the film, Perdition still failed to gather more than a single Academy Award. Conrad Hall deservedly won Best Cinematography (even if it was posthumously), but the film most worthy of Best Picture failed to get it. The only redemption available is to gather momentum among the viewers and, like Hitchcock's Vertigo, transcend the awards to become a cinematic classic.

Even if that means watching it 10 times or more.