REVIEW: The Road

The Road (dir. John Hillcoat, 2009) ****

reviewed by David Sugarman

An early tip for award success that has since somewhat dropped off the radar, this adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s (author of No Country For Old Men) Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale of a man (Viggo Mortensen) travelling south with his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

Director John Hillcoat does well to retain a constant level of danger, so that even the moments of relief from the oppressively empty landscape seem temporary and ill-advised, and screenwriter Joe Penhall gets the most out of the book’s few dialogue exchanges, plus a few great moments of voiceover by Viggo Mortensen (“If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke” was one particularly memorable line for me). Every actor puts in a stunning performance, and occasionally the film manages to hint at hope and redemption, though these are only the briefest of spark in such a dark tale. The Road is an excellent film, though (predictably) does not manage to capture the lightning of  McCarthy’s book. As is often the case with adaptations of great novels, the film conveys the drama excellently, but the story is not what makes The Road a great novel. It is McCarthy’s lyrical prose and radical formal style that sets it apart; The Road is not a formally radical film. Just a very good one.

REVIEW: The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 2009) *****

reviewed by David Sugarman

A title card at the beginning of The Hurt Locker asserts that “war is a drug”. Now that we’ve reached the end of the noughties, and the end of George W. Bush’s tenure in the White House, it seems like war is a drug that the USA is trying to kick. Like a drug – like war – Kathryn Bigelow’s film is irresistible, uncomfortable, and addictive.

Bigelow rejects the epic War Movie (capitalised) style, instead taking a low-key, verité style look at the Iraq war. Indeed, the exact war itself is almost immaterial to the film, as the director and her writer, Mark Boal, are much more interested in exploring a full psychological portrait of their protagonist. Sgt. William James, acted with a playful anarchy by Jeremy Renner, is a bomb disposal officer with nerves of steel and is one of the most annoyingly smug men I’ve seen onscreen recently, yet still very much a likable character. James is the best there is at his job. He knows he is, and is constantly locking horns with his team leader Sgt. Sanborn (a decent show from Anthony Mackie). I must stress however, that this is not Top Gun in sand. Renner gives one of the finer performances of the year, and makes James a very sympathetic kind of asshole.

The film’s writer and director I have encountered work from before, though this is their first collaboration. Mark Boal’s only previous credit, In the Valley of Elah, was another Iraq film, featuring a fantastic turns from Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron as a bereaved father and a police officer respectively. It also featured a script riddled with the mediocre and the obvious- though on the evidence of The Hurt Locker, these may well have been the fault of director Paul Haggis. The only other film directed by Bigelow that I can claim to have laid my eyes upon is her early vampire flick, Near Dark, a fun but shallow movie of decent but unremarkable technique. The Hurt Locker should guarantee Bigelow a spot in history as only the fourth woman to receive an Oscar nomination as Best Director. And, if it comes down to it, she’s infinitely more deserving of the big prize than her one-time husband and some-time collaborator, James Cameron.

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OK, I’ll admit it: I watched Near Dark because it stars Nathan Petrelli (well… Adrian Pasdar) and has vampires!

The Hurt Locker will win the Academy Award for Best Picture, because it will capture the voters’ desire for Hollywood to exercise America’s demons and draw a line under Bush’s middle-eastern conflicts with the first truly great film about Iraq.

David