Film File - The Road

From writer Cormac McCarthy comes the big screen adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, an epic post-apocalyptic tale of the survival of a father (Viggo Mortsensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they journey across a barren America that's been obliterated by a mysterious cataclysm. It is now more than 10 years since the world was destroyed by an event nobody completely understands - maybe nuclear, maybe global warming - resulting in no energy, no power, no vegetation and no food. Millions of people have been eradicated, destroyed by fires and floods or scorched and incinerated in their cars where they sat when the event hit or suffocated by starvation and despair in civilization's slow death after the power went out. The Man and The Boy are on the move with all their precious possessions in a shopping cart outfitted with a bicycle mirror so they can see who's coming up behind them. They are the same as all the other survivors on this harrowing New Frontier. Trudging along the once great American highway system en route to a hoped-for salvation of sorts on the Pacific coast, they constantly scavenge and hide from the terrors of this desperate new world - including roving bands of savage cannibals with cellars full of human cuisine and murderous thieves of every description. Along the road, the pair meet the Old Man (Robert Duvall), who tells them that he's been on the road forever. As they push deeper into the Great Unknown, the Man recalls life in a series of flashbacks before disaster struck and happy times with his wife (Charlize Theron) who took her own life rather than face the kind of world she knew was coming. As the trio push deeper into the harrowing wasteland that is a devastated America, the Man pushes his failing body ever harder in an effort to find his son some haven of safety from the relentless destruction that surrounds them. 'The Road' is a tough, uncompromising film set in a future none of us would like to contemplate too closely. As entertainment, it's the direct opposite to the other movie reviewed this week. Directed by John Hillcoat, who made the hard-as-nails Aussie western, 'The Proposition', some years back, this film is probably not the best option for anybody looking for an easy cinema experience to start off the New Year. With Mortensen milking Joe Penhall's script for as much nuance that its bare bones allow, it is a performance that may well earn him an Oscar nomination when the list comes out later this month. 'The Road' is a faithful adaptation of the McCarthy book and, as such, is exhausting and involving in even measure. Not for the faint-hearted.