First Look At The Road

Anybody who read Cormac McCarthy's Pultizer Prize winning - and soon to be considered modern classic - novel, The Road will be creaming themselves with excitement over the upcoming movie adaptation.

The book tells the story of a father and son negotiating their way across a post-apocalyptic America trying to survive the perils of the road 'hence the name. It was one of the best of the last few years, which would usually fill us with trepidation over the inevitable Hollywood fudge-fest that would contaminate the legacy of the book. But so far they have made so many good choices with this one. John Hillcoat is down to direct and his last movie The Proposition showed how well he could tell sparing stories of broken characters in desolate landscapes. Viggo Mortensen also looks like a perfect world-weary fit for the Father and based on this solitary pic, the look of the film seems appropriately bleak.

One possible worry would be the fact that they have made the son older, most likely to allow for articulate and coherent dialogue between father and son (they are pretty much the only characters in the book). The strength of the son as a character was his innocence and confusion, which forced the father to treat him with kid gloves (not literally of course). An older kid will change the dynamic but we trust the team involved.

Still, if they screw it up, we know where they live!