The RoadMovie Reviews

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Avg. Critic Score: 64 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore^® based on all critic reviews

Information for Parents:

Iffy for 15+

Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

88

Rolling Stone | Peter Travers
In this haunting portrait of America as no country for old men or young, Hillcoat -- through the artistry of Mortensen and Smit-McPhee -- carries the fire of our shared humanity and lets it burn bright and true. Read full review
88

USA Today | Claudia Puig
While the film is not as resonant as the novel, it is an honorable adaptation, capturing the essence of the bond between father and son. Read full review
88

Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert
The Road evokes the images and the characters of Cormac McCarthy's novel. It is powerful, but for me lacks the same core of emotional feeling. Read full review
75

San Francisco Chronicle |
The latest in a year filled with Armageddon movies such as "Terminator Salvation" and "2012," and it won't be the last, but it's the most chilling so far. Read full review
70

The Hollywood Reporter |
Director John Hillcoat has performed an admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale, even at the cost of sacrificing color, big scenes and standard Hollywood imagery of post-apocalyptic America. Read full review
70

The New York Times | A.O. Scott
Engrossing and at times impressive, a pretty good movie that is disappointing to the extent that it could have been great. Is this the way the world ends? With polite applause? Read full review
67

Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman
There's enough foreboding in America right now to make sitting through a movie such as The Road seem like one more heavy burden that, frankly, no one needs. Read full review
63

Washington Post | Ann Hornaday
The Road possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions. Read full review
50

Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan
The Road is a road you'll wish hadn't been taken. Not because anything's been badly done, but because there's a serious imbalance in the complicated equation between what the film forces us to endure and what we end up receiving in return. Read full review
40

Variety | Todd McCarthy
Except for the physical aspects of this bleak odyssey by a father and son through a post-apocalyptic landscape, this long-delayed production falls dispiritingly short on every front. Read full review

Metacritic link View more reviews for The Road on Metacritic

Information for Parents

Common Sense Media says Iffy for 15+ Touching but grim futuristic tale won't appeal to kids.

What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that The Road (based on the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy) is a relentlessly grim, gray portrait of a future in which an unnamed disaster has wiped most living things from the Earth, food is scarce, and people have resorted to cannibalism. (In other words, not a kid movie!) The main characters are a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his 10-year-old son; their relationship is wonderfully touching and ever hopeful, but the surrounding movie is depressing and sometimes violent, with many depictions of and references to suicide (including the boy's mother), as well as some scenes with gunfire and threats. Though older teens and adults may find it a meaningful, if not exactly entertaining, experience, know that it's not the Mad Max-type action movie that some ads have promised.

Families can talk about the unnamed disaster that brought the world to this point. What would life be like after something like that? What could or couldn't you do anymore?
Why is the boy more hopeful and trustworthy than his father? What could the boy know or understand that his father doesn't?
What made the boy's mother commit suicide? Why did she give up hope when the man and the boy still had hope?

The good stuff

Positive messages: Overall the movie creates a feeling of hopelessness, with its relentlessly gray world destroyed by the hand of man (though it's never explained exactly what happened). But the man still clings to his responsibility to raise and teach the boy all the things he knows, in the hope that there still might be a future, somehow. Likewise, their continuing journey to the sea is also based on the hope that something will still be there.
Positive role models: The man is something of a positive role model, since he continues to hope and to plan a future for his boy, no matter how uncertain it may be. But at the same time, he succumbs to frustration and paranoia and refuses to trust anyone. The boy, born after the disaster, turns out to be the movie's real role model. He's open-hearted and wishes to help others, and his hope is purer.

What to watch for

Violence: Not a huge quantity of violent scenes, but what's included can be quite disturbing. There's plenty of suicide and suggestions of suicide, with people giving up hope in a hopeless future -- including the boy's mother, who kills herself with a gun. At one point, roadside bandits threaten the heroes, gunshots are exchanged, and a man is killed. A gun is also pointed at the boy. More guns are used to threaten people. The man is shot by arrows from a crossbow, which is followed by a bloody, gruesome "first-aid" scene. The man and boy also find a flare gun. Cannibalism is suggested but not shown.
Sex: Not an issue
Language: Several (though not constant) uses of both "f--k" and "s--t," as well as "hell," "damn," "goddamn," and "ass."
Consumerism: Even in a desolate future, a few brand-name products survive. The man and the boy find a last can of Coca-Cola in a vending machine, and in one major scene, they find an underground bunker stocked with food. The boy eats Cheetos and mispronounces their name: "Chee-TOSS." The man and the boy drink Vitamin Water. Some labels can be briefly glimpsed in the background.
Drinking, drugs and smoking: In the bunker scene, the man opens a bottle of whisky and drinks. The boy wants to know what it is and wants to taste it, but the man refuses. "It makes you feel funny," he says.

Common Sense Media An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.