The Road

[french joker]

you can find links here :
http://www.davestrailerpage.co.uk/

 

[Bunker]

Is there any word on the rating? This needs to be R.

 

[Sawyer]

Is there any word on the rating? This needs to be R.

I cant imagine it would be otherwise...

 

[Dark Victory]

Is there any word on the rating? This needs to be R.

Yeah, it's R. The book has some rather...unpleasant moments.

Spoiler

a newborn baby eaten, people kidnapped and kept alive for food, bodies or body parts on the road, etc.

 

[Bunker]

Spoiler

I think the headless infant on the fire was easily the most disturbing thing in the book.

 

[Dark Victory]

I think the headless infant on the fire was easily the most disturbing thing in the book.

Yeah, I also found it creepy how

Spoiler

the boy and the man saw the group on the road a day before they found the baby.

If I were you, I'd put that in spoiler tags. Wouldn't want to ruin the moment for anybody who hasn't read the book.

 

[Bunker]

Yeah, you need to edit your quote too.

 

[Dark Victory]

^Quite right.

Anyway, I was re-reading the book and I hope to god Hilcoatt pulled off the look of the world, but I doubt it judging from the trailers. It looked like just a normal winter along with some very bad CGI in some shots. Then again the shots could be unfinished, but you never know...

I just saw Terminator Salvation, and I thought what was left of the world looked fantastic and reminded me of The Road in a lot of shots.

 

[redhawk23]

this is over a year old but I never saw it posted. A good look into the onset life while filming the road. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/movies/27road.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Still no more news? This months less than 4 months away. I mean we practically have the whole film in our hands compared to Avatar, but still has the trailer even actually shown in theaters at all? I really hope they come out with a different second trailer, the mash up of T4 and I am Legend just aint doing it for me.

 

[Rezzo]

Variety review.

This "Road" leads nowhere. If you're going to adapt a book like Cormac McCarthy's 2006 bestseller, you're pretty much obliged to make a terrific film or it's not worth doing -- first because expectations are high, and second, because the picture needs to make it worth people's while to sit through something so grim. Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front. Showing clear signs of being test-screened and futzed with to death, the Dimension release may receive a measure of respect in some quarters but is very, very far from the film it should have been, spelling moderate to tepid B.O. prospects after big fest preems.
Even more than "No Country for Old Men," with which the Coen brothers showed what is possible artistically and commercially with a McCarthy novel onscreen, "The Road" reads extremely cinematically. Filled almost entirely by spare but vivid physical descriptions of a decimated United States in its death throes after an unexplained catastrophe, and with limited dialogue, the book serves up images and tense situations that practically leap from the page as potential movie scenes.

Some things were obvious: The film's style needed to be as terse, exacting, stripped-down, tough and precise as McCarthy's prose style. The picture also should have been shocking, haunting and, at the end, deeply moving. As it is, director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") and lenser Javier Aguirresarobe have come up with some arresting scorched-earth vistas captured on locations in Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Oregon, but have missed the bigger picture almost entirely.

It's a survival story in the most elemental possible way, as an unnamed man and boy, about 11, trudge daily through a dark world of barren forests with falling trees, torched towns and vandalized stores, empty roads and depleted fields, in search of food and shelter, all the while taking care to avoid roving gangs searching for defenseless humans to be turned into slaves or, more likely, dinner.

The man (Viggo Mortensen) has a revolver with two bullets in it, then only one. As far too many flashbacks of his pre-catastrophe life reveal, he's not a military or survivalist type, and he had a gorgeous wife (Charlize Theron) until she couldn't stand it anymore and took off. But his love for his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has made him resourceful and resolute despite the utter lack of long-term prospects, and he continually responds to the youngster's despairing questions with answers that insist upon perseverance.

For reasons that remain unclear even after they arrive there, they are walking toward the sea, and dreadful sights abound along the way: skeletons, rotting bodies, naked prisoners locked in dark basements like animals to be butchered (the book's two most ghastly images have been dispensed with, however). Occasionally, they chance upon an abandoned house with a stock of canned food (Coca-Cola has no problem surviving the apocalypse), clean blankets and clothes.

The drama is one little genre step away from being an outright zombie movie, something that's much more evident onscreen, with its drooling, crusty-toothed aggressors and live humans with missing limbs; memories of "Night of the Living Dead" unavoidably advance in all the scenes in which the man and boy take refuge in a house, where they must contend with unfriendly marauders.

But Hillcoat, who played with heavy violence in "The Proposition" and made some of it stick, shows no talent for or inclination toward setting up a scene here; any number of sequences in "The Road" could have been very suspenseful if built up properly, but Hillcoat, working from a script by Joe Penhall, just hopscotches from scene to scene in almost random fashion without any sense of pacing or dramatic modulation.

Dialogue that should have been directed with an almost Pinteresque sense of timing is delivered without meaningful shadings, principally by two actors who have no chemistry together. Unfortunately, Mortensen lacks the gravitas to carry the picture; suddenly resembling Gabby Hayes with his whiskers and wayward hair, the actor has no bottom to him, and his interactions with Smit-McPhee, whom one can believe as Theron's son but not Mortensen's, never come alive. Tellingly, both thesps are better in their individual scenes with other actors; Mortensen gets into it with Robert Duvall, who plays an old coot met along the road, while Smit-McPhee registers a degree of rapport with Guy Pearce, practically unrecognizable at first as another wanderer. Generally, the boy's readings are blandly on the nose.

Scraps of narration by Mortensen seem like unnecessary afterthoughts, while the preponderance of scenes featuring the wife is explainable only because Theron's presence needed to be justified by more screen time. Score by longtime Hillcoat collaborator Nick Cave and Warren Ellis borders on the treacly, softening the tone and further conventionalizing a film that should have gone the other direction toward something harsh and daring.

 

[Octoberist]

I do have to say that The Road, in general, is a hard book to adapt anyway..

 

[redhawk23]

so they cut out the people in the basement and the roasted baby then?

this review is such the total opposite of the esquire review, unless they edited the living hell out of this since esquire screened, then somebody is lying. lol.

 

[Bunker]

Wow...I am severely disappoint.

 

[redhawk23]

i don't know man everything else i've heard about this film has been the exact opposite on many very specific points that this new review trashes on. like i do belive the esquire review talked about how the trailer complety misrepresented the entire film while this review seems like the trailer would be very accurate.

did variety actually see the film or just go off the trailer? one may be lead to suspect.

 

[Dark Victory]

If they cut out the baby and basement scenes then I'll watch this film online. Wow, this review is a polar opposite to some of the early screenings'. Though, I think the critic might not have gotten the book in some parts. The man and son aren't really supposed to have any chemistry together. They've been dehumanized as much as any Holocaust victim. For the book's pace, it was very repetitive and big plot points in the story were few and far between. Script reviews have said that Penhall's script was more faithful than Watchmen so some grotesque scenes like the two mentioned above or the decapitated head in the gorcery store were probably cut. Thanks, Weinstens.

edit: I just watched the clips on TrailerAddict and they weren't that impressive at all. I'm worried now...

 

[redhawk23]

^the esquire review even talks about the process of the trailer and how harvey weinstein hardly even thought about it he just randomly chose one out of a bunch of premade trailers. hes been handling things quite terribly lately

 

[TheComicbookKid]

so they cut out the people in the basement and the roasted baby then?

this review is such the total opposite of the esquire review, unless they edited the living hell out of this since esquire screened, then somebody is lying. lol.

In mentions in the Variety review that it looks like it was screen-tested to death so yeah, it has been edited the crap out of.

 

[AlteredEgo]

If they cut out the baby and basement scenes then I'll watch this film online. Wow, this review is a polar opposite to some of the early screenings'. Though, I think the critic might not have gotten the book in some parts. The man and son aren't really supposed to have any chemistry together. They've been dehumanized as much as any Holocaust victim. For the book's pace, it was very repetitive and big plot points in the story were few and far between. Script reviews have said that Penhall's script was more faithful than Watchmen so some grotesque scenes like the two mentioned above or the decapitated head in the gorcery store were probably cut. Thanks, Weinstens.

edit: I just watched the clips on TrailerAddict and they weren't that impressive at all. I'm worried now...

i gotta disagree on that part. i think that was kind of one of the themes of the book, the fact that these two, father and son, despite having been put through hell and having been desensitized to the world around them still very much care for and love each other and always put each other's well-being before themselves.

 

[danoyse]

It sounds like they left the people in the basement - it's mentioned in the review. The "ghastly image" they might be referring to in that review was the man in the basement who already had his legs chopped off.

But it does sound like they did away with the baby, though.

 

[Armored Avenger]

The people in the basement look to still be in the film, as it's mentioned in the review.

Spoiler

I hope you do see the man with his legs already removed, or some other person missing body parts, otherwise the idea that they are being stored for food could be lost.
It sounds as if baby scene has gone. Thats a shame, as it's one of the most powerful and disturbing parts of the book and really shows what humanity has become and the terrible things the people will resort to just to survive.

 

[Boom]

There is also:

Spoiler

The corpses melted into the black top.

 

[Fanticon]

i know some people that have read the book and are looking forward to this...i don't know how well of an adaptation it'll turn out to be...the preview looked ok and i still want to see it cuz i'll watch viggo in any role. he's just so intense and such an amazing actor. i think i may actually try to read the book before the movie comes out.

 

[Rezzo]

Didn't see these clips posted yesterday.

"Never Killed a Man"
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"Bad Guys"
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"Catch Us"
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"He's a God"
[YT]p2wI4yY632U[/YT]

"We Did Good"
[YT]GWHhLrBztVk[/YT]

 

[redhawk23]

i officially reserve hope that this film will be good.

I generally find esquires reviews to be trustworthy and the extra year of post was totally enough time for addition of more ash and the decoloration of foliage (one of the few complaints i've heard from early reviews)

also on a side note, any time i'm watching anything and it has the guy that'd played Cromarty/John Henry on the Sarah Conner Chronicles it totally just takes me out of it, lol, i don't know why

 

[gwynplaine]

And the oscar goes to ... Viggo Mortensen.
That's something I'd like to hear some day, he's such an awesome actor.
Maybe the road will be the one ?