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 upper echelons of an Irish mob in Rock Island, Illinois in 1931. Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) is the right-hand man and surrogate son of gang chief John Rooney (Paul Newman). Sullivan’s older son, Michael Jr., witnesses his father and Rooney’s son Connor (Daniel Craig) machine gun dissident gang members.
Connor’s long-time jealousy toward Sullivan now finds an “excusable” outlet: he kills Sullivan’s wife and younger son, whom he mistakes for the young Michael. Michael Sr., knowing that Rooney will protect Connor, turns to the Capone gang, run by Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci), in Chicago. Although Sullivan is viewed as an asset and commands much respect from his underworld cronies, Nitti is protecting Connor and hires a killer to dispatch the unrelenting elder Sullivan. The Michaels, father and son, head for a relative’s home in a town called Perdition, hotly pursued by Maguire (Jude Law), a psychotic assassin who kills his victims and then photographs them. The Sullivan’s six-week journey and struggle for survival form the film’s core.
The biggest problem with Road to Perdition is that it is false from beginning to end. In the first place, the film depicts some imaginary breed of gracious and principled gangsters. In an early sequence, Sullivan comes home to his beautifully understated house, with an adoring wife and two perfectly normal children waiting for him. It is the picture o...
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...s ask: “Can a man who has led a bad life achieve redemption through his child?” Of course no man is simply “bad.” Even an assassin has human qualities. However, Road to Perdition is making a different argument: that a horrible, gruesome job has no apparent impact on an individual’s inner nature.
In any event, the comment about leading a “bad life” is fraudulent, because neither Sullivan nor Rooney nor Nitti is truly portrayed as a “bad man.” On the contrary, they are quite sympathetically presented, as “men of honor.” Only the outsider, the hit man who seems to enjoy his work, Maguire, is cast in a negative light.
There is no serious exploration of the father-son theme. Michael Jr. fails to experience any serious inner conflict once he discovers that his father murders people for a living! He is presented to us as a sensitive soul, yet he does not even seem to hold his father responsible in any manner for the deaths of his mother and younger brother. And Sullivan’s insistence on seeking revenge places his surviving son in danger and nearly costs him his life. That hardly constitutes redemption for leading a “bad life.” The film lazily glosses over this and every other discrepancy.
• Setting: Oklahoma City, OK – The county jail; the trail around the lighthouse and Gary’s house. • Plot: Tony is a young adult who has no direction or hope for this future. That is until he meets Malcom, a businessman who has faced similar challenges. Malcom comes to the county jail on Monday’s and soon builds a connection with Tony. Malcom shares his knowledge and experience with Tony and he soon becomes successful himself.
Like most things captured on film for the purpose of being marketed, the richness of gangster life, with sex, money, and power in surplus, is glorified, and thus embraced by the audience. And as a rule, if something works Hollywood repeats it, ala a genre. What Scarface and Little Caesar did was ultimately create a genre assigning powerful qualities to criminals. Such sensationalism started with the newspapers who maybe added a little more color here and there to sell a few more copies, which is portrayed in Scarface’s two newspaper office scenes. Leo Braudy denounces genres as offending “our most common definition of artistic excellence” by simply following a predetermined equation of repetition of character and plot. However, Thomas Schatz argues that many variations of plot can exist within the “arena” that the rules of the genre provide.
...le, abuse, pregnancy, money, accusations, sex, love, relationships, death, family and disagreements. These issues can be supported by scenes from the film but we could fail to appreciate the rest of this document. These statements are easily supported when viewing the film.
The main protagonist of the film, Scotty Smalls, is introduced as a straight-A, friendless young boy who has just moved into a new neighborhood in new state. While
Interpersonal relationships are a potent entity that wildly flutter, like a liberated pigeon, through the miserable docks of Elia Kazan’s 1954 film ‘On the Waterfront,’ shaping the moral metamorphosis of protagonist Terry Malloy – from an analysts perspective, the ‘power’ source of the film. Terry’s voyage from an inarticulate and diminished “bum” to a gallant “contender,” is the pedestal that the film gyrates around, however, it is palpable that Terry – a man branded with his primitive mores - is not equipped of emancipating himself from the self-preservative cycle of “D and D” singlehandedly. Therefore, the catalytic, moral facilitation of inspirational outsiders - Edie Doyle and Father Barry – are essential to the rewiring of Terry’s conscience and his propulsion into “testifying what is right against what is wrong.” However, rapports do not simply remain ‘strong’ and stable for the entire duration of the film – they fluctuate. Terry shuffles closer to the side of morality each scene, portrayed by the simultaneous deterioration of Terry’s intertwinement with Johnny Friendly and “the mob” and intensification of his romantic involvement with Edie and confidence in Father Barry. Relationships fuel and glorify Terry’s powerful, audience-enthralling journey to morality.
Every film can be related back to socially significant issues that occurred during the time it was released. It’s a snapshot of the issues during that time period. Film is not created in a vacuum. As described in our textbook, film “Conveys “the temper of an age of a nation” as well as that of the artists who produces it” (Belton 22). Films tend to reflect current society, country ideals or beliefs in order for the audience to relate. Some of those techniques used include, the American dream, family, corruption, divorce, and crime. If a director decides not include current social issues than it becomes harder for an audience to relate to the film because they will not be able to connect to the characters and get into their shoes. One film that encompasses all of these current social issues is American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013). This film is a melodrama because of the context and social issues this film deals with. American Hustle has a social significance to today’s current culture, society, beliefs and social issues through the use of the American dream, corruption, divorce, crime and family.
This cultural phenomenon is not exclusive to music, of course. One need not be a sociologist or anthropologist to clearly see this Africanist presence operating in the linguistic as well as aesthetic elements of popular culture today; however, a particularly fascinating and recent development in the use of blackness can be seen in recent Hollywood cinema. No longer a mere source for cultural self-realization, blackness now actively aids in the empowerment and redemption of whiteness and in no other film is this made quite as clear as it is in Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Green Mile. A period piece not unlike Darabont’s previous film, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile is also set in a prison during the first part of the twentieth century. The central character, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), is an affable guard placed in charge of Cold Mountain Correctional Facility’s death row, called The Green Mile by the prison population.
One could easily dismiss movies as superficial, unnecessarily violent spectacles, although such a viewpoint is distressingly pessimistic and myopic. In a given year, several films are released which have long-lasting effects on large numbers of individuals. These pictures speak
Connelly, Marie. "The films of Martin Scorsese: A critical study." Diss. Case Western Reserve University, 1991. Web. 07 Apr 2014.
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
In the article “The Thematic Paradigm” exerted from his book, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, Robert Ray provides a description of the two types of heroes depicted in American film: the outlaw hero and the official hero. Although the outlaw hero is more risky and lonely, he cherishes liberty and sovereignty. The official hero on the other hand, generally poses the role of an average ordinary person, claiming an image of a “civilized person.” While the outlaw hero creates an image of a rough-cut person likely to commit a crime, the official hero has a legend perception. In this essay, I will reflect on Ray’s work, along with demonstrating where I observe ideologies and themes.
The entire movie is bursting with counter narratives, when the audience believes they hold an accurate grasp on what is truly happening, there is a misguiding event, as the storyline is continually challenged. The viewer’s beginning formations about what is going on are learned to be always questionable because what is repeatedly steered to trust and is revealed not be the truth in the conclusion of the film. This neo-noir film had multiple scenarios that make the previous actions untrustworthy to the actual message. This proves that all the observations and thoughts the viewer possesses are only relevant to what they are exposed to and shown and not to what is, in fact, happening.
The film exhibits and analyzes the story of NFL player Michael Oher’s life through high school as he endures various adversities and difficulties in his life. It tells Oher’s story of being the son of a cocaine addictive mother and absentee father, who is homeless due the circumstances of his family. Despite not having either of his parents in his life he did have Big Tony, who was his friend’s dad. Big Tony would allow Michael to sleep on his sofa some days when he did not have anywhere else to live and he also was the main cause to Michael being admitted to the Wingate Academy Christian School. At this school Michael meets S.J., who is the son on the Tuohy’s. S.J. begins a friendship with Michael at a time when no one else would and on a rainy day after S.J.’s thanksgiving play, the Tuohys see Michael walking. They ask him ...
The film Pulp Fiction was an immediate box office success when it was released in 1994 and it was also well received by the critics, and celebrated for the way it appeared to capture exactly a certain pre-millennial angst and dislocation in Western capitalist societies. The term post-modernist, often used to refer to art and architecture, was applied to this film. The pulp fiction refers to popular novels which are bought in large numbers by less well educated people and enjoyed for their entertainment value. The implication is that the film concerns topics of interest to this low culture, but as this essay will show, in fact, the title is ironic and the film is a very intellectual presentation of issues at the heart of contemporary western culture and philosophy.
This is a movie about a professional killer, or "Cleaner", named Léon played by Jean Reno, and his unlikely interaction with a 12-year old girl, Mathilda played by Natalie Portman. Mathilda's family is murdered by corrupt Drug Enforcement Agents (DEA) lead by Agent Stansfield played by Gary Oldman. Agent Stansfield, is portrayed as a drug addict, mentally unstable and an overtly violent and corrupt law enforcement team leader.