Viggo Mortensen News @ Brego.net

Marshall Fine writes that The Road has "drawn mixed reviews coming out of the Venice Film Festival."

The chief knock on it? That it's downbeat and depressing.

How shocking — given that it's based on Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a father and son trying to survive a world-killing nuclear winter. I guess those critics were looking for a more cheerful post-apocalyptic tale.

In fact, Hillcoat's film is both faithful to and expands upon McCarthy’s novel. But as the book did, it always returns to the father, played with fierce tenderness by Viggo Mortensen, and his efforts to keep his boy alive and get him to some safe place — if such a place still exists. It's a performance that alternately smolders and flares, as Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee (as the boy) trudge through a gray, desolate landscape, trying to maintain their humanity and stay alive, while dodging others who have succumbed to the Darwinian imperative.

It's an important and a genuinely moving film, one that deserves a wide audience. Here's hoping that it finds one in the crowded award season of November, when it will be released.

I must confess that I am dreading the film as much as I look forward to it. I'm depressed enough already! McCarthy's The Road has been sitting on my shelf for over a year, waiting for me to build up the courage to read it. But with Viggo in the film, I'll be in the theater as soon as it reaches my hometown, and I have no doubt I'll be glad I saw it.

You can read the rest of Marshall Fine's Toronto reviews at his site, Hollywood & Fine.

Labels: reviews, The Road, Viggo Mortensen

The official theatrical trailer for The Road was released yesterday. The film, which stars Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Garret Dillahunt, is now scheduled for an October 16th, 2009, release.

Click on the "HD" button to watch a nice big shiny version.

Based on Cormac McCarthy's best-selling and Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road is the epic post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son across a barren landscape that was blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed civilization and most life on earth. I've been worried that it would be just quietly depressing but it looks as though there is a lot of action adventure to balance the quiet. I'm expecting this to be another incredible Viggo performance. Is it October yet?

Labels: The Road, trailer, Viggo Mortensen

From Row Three, one of the first images of Viggo Mortensen in the upcoming movie, The Road. Viggo plays "Father" in this film version of Cormac McCarthy's novel. With Mortensen is Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays "Son."

The film is scheduled to be released in the USA in November of 2008.

(Click on the image to see a larger version.)

Added: This image also appears, along with another shot, in the May 30, 2008, issue of Entertainment Weekly. See details and scans on our The Road page.

Labels: movie, screencaps, The Road, Viggo Mortensen