The Road Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall Director: John Hillcoat
In an ideal cinephile universe, readers should be advised against buying this DVD.
Not that The Road is awful - on the contrary, it's very good - it's just that John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel should really be seen on a cinema screen rather than on a television, amid all the debris and distraction of our cosy, modern materialistic life. But since the film has been overlooked by Hong Kong distributors, local film fans will have to content themselves with a home viewing.
The Road depicts the struggles of a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they trek through the wasteland of an America decimated by an unnamed cataclysm to seek warmer climes in the south.
Cold and perennially starved, they have to seek food and shelter throughout their journey; at the same time they are forced to defend themselves - sometimes violently - against gun-wielding gangs who roam the land, hunting down and feasting on weaker human beings. Cannibalism, as the protagonist's voiceover states, is always 'the main fear', and it's certainly so in McCarthy's novel, when he writes about how families gobble down their young in order to survive.
Understandably, Hillcoat and his screenwriter Joe Penhall have elected to tread lightly on this, leaving the issue largely spoken about rather than seen; the one scene which remains, when the pair happen on a cellar filled with naked humans farmed as food, probably suffices in conveying the horror of the times.