tofublog

I have been looking forward to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road hitting the big screen for quite a while.  I have a few previous posts about the book and movie.  Viggo Mortensen seems like a great choice for the father.  I was a little worried about Charlize Theron’s role, her character is hardly in the book at all.  I worried she would push for more screen time. 

The film was scheduled for release 11/14/08 and I have been searching for a Trailer for the last couple of months.  I was getting worried in September.  No trailer with 8 weeks to go.  Then October.  4 weeks to release and nothing.  Now, news that John Hillcoat’s adaptation of The Road is going to be delayed, potentially until 2009.

I found this story on Chud.   It includes a review from someone who saw an early cut of the film a couple of days ago.

…it was just a complete mess…the film never pretends to be interested in its opaque story, replacing what I assume would be literary details with bleak, miserablist [sic] moments edited together randomly, none feeling like they emerged from the same film.  It might just be unadaptable, because after the first twenty minutes the rest of the film is a crushing bore of a foregone conclusion- I think you can all guess what happens to the one character who mysteriously coughs all the time.
The focus group I attended railed against the repetitive score, which was probably temp but sounded like a minimalist new Nick Cave score that was heavy on the piano and droned through the heavily dramatic moments.
There’s no "movie" there.  The main crux- that Earth has fallen into a post-apocalyptic wasteland- is dealt with pretty vaguely, enough to the point where there’s really no allegorical parallel at all, and as far as intimate post-apocalyptic movies, they tend to be similar, in that they involve lots and lots of walking until someone important dies, and that seems to be the formula this follows.  The focus group also tore into Charlize Theron’s flashback role as Viggo’s estranged wife, who comes across as a screaming harpy with only a couple of minutes of screentime who unpleasantly ditches the family for no explicit purpose, as well as Michael K. Williams’ role as the only black man in the film, a guy who robs the hero and ends up humbled and without his clothes- cries of racism, as you could guess.
Product placement abounds as well, to a distracting level.  Apparently there is a Coca Cola scene in the book, but in the film it plays like a separate commercial, as Viggo gives his son his first Coke.  The boy remarks at how fizzy and delicious it is and the dad lets him finish it on his own as the child asks, "Is that because it’s the last one I’ll ever have?"
Harvey Weinstein was at the screening, and he left early- whatever that means, I’ll leave to the pundits.  But not only is the film unfinished for its supposed November release date, it’s also a complete fiasco on every creative level.

The problem with this guys review is that it sounds Exactly like the book.   If the Weinstein’s actually listen to this guy there could be some real problems.   I am sure that the score is super minimal…  Nick Cave piano and guitar drone?  Perfect.  This book is extremely bleak and a bit disjointed.  I really hope they keep the movie just like this guy describes it.  He will love Lethal Weapon 5.  Just leave this movie alone and don’t listen to the focus group.