The Road
Dimension Films | Release Date: November 25, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
USA TodayClaudia 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-TimesRoger 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
88
Rolling StonePeter 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
83
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The Road walks a tremendously daring and delicate line between inspiration and horror, and it does so not only in the events it depicts but in its very air and atmosphere. It was unforgettable on the page, and it impresses equally, or at least it does so remarkably often, on screen. Read full review
80
Film ThreatElias Savada
It is compellingly enervating and a marvel in the filmmaking process. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Intense and, yes, depressing - and earns every minute that it rattles inside your head. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
And then, Robert Duvall appears—or, should I say, insinuates himself out of the muck. Cagily, his character wends his way into the story, played by the one American actor who might best understand the limits of bluster. “It’s foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these,” he mutters in the Duvall twang, the weather and indignity beaten into him, and The Road suddenly feels major. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Between the two performances there's not a false note. Between the father and son there's an unbreakable bond. Though civilization has ended, love and parental duty shape the course of this fable, which is otherwise as heartwarming as a Beckett play shorn of humor. Read full review
80
EmpireDan Jolin
One of the most chillingly effective visions of the world’s end ever put on screen -- and a heart-rending study of parenthood, to boot. Read full review
75
PremiereMark Salisbury
This might just be a tad too grueling and bleak for everyone’s liking, but it’s a Road that’s definitely well worth traveling. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The movie The Road is nowhere close to its literary sire, but it's probably the best one could hope for from a movie version. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The filmmakers capture enough of the book's essence -- and the power of its knockout, transcendent ending -- to more than justify the movie's existence. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
The Road isn't a masterpiece...But I cannot think of another film this year that has stayed with me, its images of dread and fear - and yes, perhaps hope - kicking around like such a terrible dream. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleAmy Biancolli
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
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Essentially a love story, as stripped of sentimentality as the landscape is shorn of green, yet an extraordinary love story nonetheless – powerful and poignant and, even in the midst of hope's imminent extinction, hopeful too. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah Young
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 TimesA.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
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Portrayed ad infinitum in sci-fi and fantasy, the postapocalypse may now seem about as scary as Post Raisin Bran, but Hillcoat gives it an unnerving solidity by focusing on the drab details of survival and linking them to the more hellish aspects of modern American life. Read full review
70
SalonStephanie Zacharek
John Hillcoat's The Road is an honorable adaptation of a piece of pulp fiction disguised as high art; it a has more directness and more integrity than its source material, the 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen 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
67
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Aas grim as The Road gets, Hillcoat goes a little soft at the wrong time. Someone like Michael Haneke would have no trouble embracing this material’s uncompromising dreariness. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
The Road deviates from McCarthy's original text via a series of flashbacks to the man's pre-apocalyptic life with the woman (Theron) who both leaves her family behind and is in turn left behind by them. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The best thing about the film is Viggo Mortensen’s performance. A stealth talent of many shadings, Mortensen has a way of fitting easily into nearly any period, any milieu. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
The Road has the signposts of an important film, but it lacks the diversions of an inviting trip. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Everything about the film is a welcome rebuke to the happy-face apocalypse of “2012,’’ a movie that turns mass extinction into the Greatest Show on Earth. In The Road, what has been lost is recognized as infinitely precious; what’s left is bitter and our due. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn 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
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Evocative as it is, The Road comes up short, not because it’s bleak but because it’s monotonous. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth 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
50
New York PostKyle Smith
Doesn't offer plot or an inquiry into the evil in men's hearts. It simply wallows in the filth and inhumanity that surround a father and his pre-adolescent son as they march across the shattered remains of this country. Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
For everything the movie gets right--most notably the impressively pared-down script by Joe Penhall and the two truthful and fearless performances from Mortensen and McPhee--there's a corresponding painful blunder, like the overwrought score from Nick Cave. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
The novelist Cormac McCarthy was served well by the Coen Brothers' adaptation of his novel "No Country for Old Men" but comes a cropper in The Road, a lugubrious trek through postapocalyptic debris. Read full review
40
VarietyTodd 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
30
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Pale by comparison to an action thriller like "Children of Men" or gross out eco-catastrophe like "Land of the Dead," squandering its ready-made zombie scenario. Read full review
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