Moments of horror and suspense alleviate the film's slow pacing, but mostly we're trudging along with the travelers

The long and winding road leads… well, I don’t know where. In The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy‘s recent short novel, it seemingly leads to hell.

McCarthy’s writing is also the basis for the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men; his latest work is more like “No Old Men in the Country,” with most of the weak and infirm having perished after an undefined apocalypse. There’s a shared bleakness in both stories, a belief that evil exists in the world, and it is on the verge of invading your life.

The novel and film focus on the journey of two unnamed characters. The Man (Viggo Mortensen) has one charge in his life: his son. The Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has seen more than any child should, being raised in a world where the sky is grey, the ground is covered in ash, marauders roam the countryside raping and killing, and food is about as scarce as hope. Together the two struggle for the most basic necessities: warmth, shelter and nutrition.

Sometimes the abandoned stores and houses they enter hold unexpected treasures, like an old can of Coke. Other times they hold the bodies of people who gave up and ended their struggles, either hanging in the rafters or in their own beds. But the two keep trudging forward in their quest to find something. Maybe it’s hope, maybe it’s a patch of blue sky, maybe it’s death. The road is traveled, but the destination is unknown. It’s a perverse twist on the adage, ”It’s not the destination that matters, but rather the journey.”

Mortensen and Smit-McPhee are the movie’s heart and soul. Mortensen was able to work the dirty, grungy look in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but Aragorn is a clean-cut, preppy dream compared to this grime-caked traveler. Frighteningly skinny with protruding ribs and skeletal arms, Mortensen certainly looks the part of a starving, desperate man. Whether he fully acts the part is a different question. Where he falters is his relationship with Smit-McPhee. Mortensen does protection well, but he doesn’t ever master the familial bond to convincingly play a father. If not for the flashbacks, it might be feasible to believe that the two are not blood relations, but rather just an elder and a dependent.

To read the rest of Tim’s review, hop on over to Metro Weekly, where his article is currently running.