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Tom Hanks attempts to go nasty by MATTHEW HAYS
Surfaces are just that, however, and part of Perdition’s atmosphere (as well as the film’s overriding theme) is that things aren’t always as they first seem. Beneath all that pure, white, clean snow, lies darkness and evil (get it?) and early on, we’re certainly given a rather glaring sense of doom as to what might lie ahead. As the elder of Hanks’s two young sons, Tyler Hoechlin is extremely curious about what it is dad does for a living. He seems to keep awfully odd hours, and when the kiddies inquire about what precisely it is Hanks is up to, they’re rapped on the knuckles for asking.
One night, wee Hoechlin hides underneath the seat of his father’s car and tags along for a joy ride, finally able to see precisely what pops is up to. No good at all, as it turns out. There’s a visit to a member of a mob cartel, who’s soon iced in a knock-down, blood-on-the-floor bit of Godfather-like nastiness. Sonny boy has witnessed it all, and is caught in the act of looking. Hanks swears the lad to secrecy. And now, the son has the answer he was looking for: why, dad’s a vicious hit man for the mob! Hanks, meanwhile, is caught up in a vicious power struggle at the office. Though he’s very good at what he does, Hanks soon finds there are sinister forces within the conglomerate that want him gone. And though mob leader Paul Newman loves Hanks dearly (the elder mobster having brought up Hanks), his principal loyalties lie with his own biological son, who, as shaky Shakespeare-inspired screenplays dictate, isn’t nearly as good a guy as the surrogate son is. There are all sorts of plot points which really shouldn’t be ruined here-and I’m not going to, though I’ve not a lot of faith in other reviewers, who undoubtedly will let most of the film’s narrative points unravel throughout their write-ups. This isn’t an especially great film, but there are a few nice surprises, in particular some exceptional suspense sequences (involving gun-toting standoffs and assassination attempts).
What does bog down a mob movie like this one (and shame on the reviewer who called this the greatest mob movie since The Godfather), is its incongruous Disney bits. Amid all the shooting-including bits of brains being strewn about-are touching scenes between father and son, as Hanks teaches his son the path to survival. Running throughout the film is a rather ridiculously overplayed theme: that Hanks, though deeply flawed, is simply human, and that humans, no matter what acts they’re guilty of, can’t always be easily pegged as either good or evil. Though an apparently well-meaning theme, this really can’t be held up as anything resembling a revelation, except perhaps to members of the Hollywood screenwriting union. It also seems weird for a child to intone, as this one does during his innocent, naïve voiceover that frames the film, that he can’t really say if his father was a good man or a bad one. In my books, someone who blows people’s brains out for a living probably falls into the “bad” category, but who knows? I’d heard things were bad, but I didn’t know Americans had fallen quite so far in the direction of gun culture that this actually qualifies as a valid question. But there you are. Newman works beautifully as the conflicted mob honcho, but Hanks, in an effort to play moral ambiguity, fails. I can certainly see where he’s coming from as an actor: spreading of wings, expanding one’s range, that sort of thing. But that doesn’t help Road to Perdition. Even when he’s blowing brains out, Hanks reeks of family-man, well-meaning, sweet-and-harmless, making-pleas-for-tolerance-of-AIDS-sufferers-during-his-speech-at-the-Oscars-hardly a mob hit man. Thus Perdition feels like two different movies that don’t fit-a square peg foisted into a round hole. It’s Michael Corleone meets Walt Disney! : Road to Perdition opens Friday, July 12 >> Movie Listings |
With
only two movies under his belt-the Oscar-winning American Beauty and
this week’s Road to Perdition-one thing is certain of director
Sam Mendes: he gives great atmosphere.