Synopsis
The acclaimed graphic novel from crime writer Max Allan Collins becomes this big budget Dreamworks drama from director Sam Mendes and screenwriter David Self. Tom Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan, a morally conflicted Depression-era hit man committing murder in the name of his employer, John Rooney (Paul Newman). A kindly, aging Irish crime boss who raised Sullivan as his surrogate son, Rooney is affiliated with Al Capone in Chicago and thus wields great power in the "Tri-Cities" of Moline, IL; Rock Island, IL; and Davenport, IA. Curious about his father's mysterious profession, Sullivan's son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), stows away in his father's automobile one night and witnesses the execution of a man at the hands of Sullivan and Rooney's biological son, Connor (Daniel Craig). Although Michael keeps his promise to remain silent about what he's seen, the paranoid and unstable Connor tries to wipe out the entire Sullivan clan anyway, succeeding only in killing Sullivan's wife, Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and youngest son, Peter (Liam Aiken). Enraged at this and another surprise betrayal by the Rooneys, Sullivan embarks on a path of bloody retribution, Michael in tow. Although he intends to leave his boy with relatives in the rural town of Perdition once the coast is clear, he ends up exposing Michael to the goriest aspects of his talents, slaughtering former associates as he dodges contract assassin Maguire (Jude Law) and cripples the cash flow of the Rooney and Capone organizations through a series of bank robberies, attempting to force either mob family to offer up the sequestered Connor as a sacrifice. Inspired by the popular Japanese comic book series -Lone Wolf and Cub and based loosely on an episode from the life and career of notorious real-life crime figures John and Connor Looney, Road to Perdition co-stars Stanley Tucci as legendary Chicago mobster Frank Nitti.
What Critics Say
Road to Perdition is certainly a film worth watching, especially for the vibrant performances of Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law; the wonderfully rendered visuals; and the challenging moral questions. But it isn't perfectly satisfying, proving even a blazing Tommy gun can miss the bull's-eye.
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Movie News
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Fox joins Hanks on "The Road to Perdition"
DreamWorks Pictures has agreed to sell half of its stake in The Road to Perdition to Twentieth Century Fox. The film is understood to have evolved for two primary reasons: the budget brought by the talent was too high and the opportunity to release the DreamWorks principal Steven Spielberg from a film commitment to Fox, Reuters reports. The DreamWorks-originated gangster picture will be hemmed by Sam Mendes of American Beauty and star Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law. The film is tentatively set for a spring 2002 release.