Director Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition is the officially-approved US film of the moment, overwhelmingly endorsed by the media and starring "America's favorite actor," Tom Hanks. An unstated assumption is that the movie's pedigree makes it an obligatory cultural or quasi-cultural experience for certain social layers. It is a gangster film with darkened images meant to impart an art-house quality. Set in the early Depression era, it is also insinuated that a social insight or two can be found lurking in the shadows.
Road to Perdition, even more than Mendes' previous much-acclaimed film, American Beauty, is fool's gold. The filmmaker has once again wrapped up crude banalities in shiny tin foil. But at least the latter film made some pretense at critiquing American materialism and careerism.
Adapted from the comic-book novel (the third major film adaptation of a graphic novel this year!) by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner, the film centers on father-son relationships in the......
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