Viggo Mortensen - Movie Reviews The Road

First came the apocalypse with 2012. Now comes the post apocalypse with The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen, which arrives in theaters in limited release this weekend. It is enthralling several critics. A.O. Scott in the New York Times says that the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it movies have a similar theme. "These two films -- the cheesy action blockbuster and the earnest, literary Oscar aspirant -- converge on a serious, anxious question. In the wake of a planetary catastrophe, how will humanity survive? Not the species itself, but rather the repertory of behaviors and impulses that we like to think separate us from other animals." His verdict " The Road is engrossing and at times impressive, a pretty good movie that is disappointing to the extent that it could have been great. Is this the way the world ends? With polite applause?" Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News writes that it "earns every minute that it rattles inside your head." Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes similarly "I cannot think of another film this year that has stayed with me, its images of dread and fear - and yes, perhaps hope -- kicking around like such a terrible dream." Claudia Puig in USA Today calls it "stirring and life-affirming." Kyle Smith in the New York Post has just the opposite reaction, however. "File The Road under apocalypse porn," he writes. "Unlike Wall-E and Children of Men , though, this one offers no hope of renewal, no exit from the hell it so persuasively depicts." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times shares that opinion, writing that The Road "turns out to be good at shocking and upsetting us, but it lacks the compensating emotional heft that would make absorbing those shocks worth our while." And Lisa Kennedy puts it more succinctly in the Denver Post, writing that the movie "has brutality but not benevolence."

27/11/2009