Stream it soon on Prime Video: In this sci-fi highlight, a ‘Lord of the Rings’ star fights for survival in the post-apocalypse

The enormous popularity of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy turned some previously only moderately successful actors into world stars and provided them with a lot of work in the years that followed. For me, one of the best films of any of the cast members of the fantasy saga is “The route“ – a very authentic-looking mix of an exciting apocalyptic or survival thriller, a varied road movie and a moving father-son drama.

Please note: this is anything but light fare. ‘The Road’ is not horror in the classic sense. However, you can still be scared for almost two hours: about the nameless main characters, played by Viggo Mortensen, Aragorn from “The Lord of the Rings”, and Kodi Smit-McPhee (“Planet of the Apes”, “Let Me In”), who was only eleven years old at the time. films are presented credibly.

‘The Road’ is currently included in the Amazon Prime Video subscription, but only for a short time: after September 27, 2023, the film will disappear from the offer and can then only be streamed at an additional cost.

That’s what ‘The Road’ is about

Years after an unspecified global environmental disaster, a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel on foot through a completely deserted and bitterly cold North America. They want to go south, where there should still be green landscapes. They push their meager possessions into a rickety shopping cart, constantly searching for something to eat or at least a halfway safe shelter for the night.

They must be constantly on their guard; especially in front of the few other people who survived. Because most of them have banded together into murderous gangs and don’t even shy away from cannibalism.

In this environment, the father desperately tries not only to protect his child, but also to teach him humanity and morality – values ​​that he himself has to abandon time and time again to keep himself and him alive since the boy’s mother ( Charlize Theron) gave up and chose suicide.

“The Road” stays very close to the original

The first heartbreaking scene comes after just a few minutes. In it, the main character explains to his shocked offspring how the gun works, which he always carries with him and which contains his last two cartridges. The gun is not there for hunting. Because animals are also almost completely extinct. Rather, the bullets are intended to kill yourself quickly and painlessly in hopeless situations.

The film, which also delivers several equally emotional and powerfully exciting moments, is based on the novel published in German under the title “Die Straße” by one of my favorite American authors: Cormac McCarthy (“No Country For Old Men” ). Like me, all fans of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book will be pleased with how closely “The Road” follows the original. For example, several dialogues have been reproduced verbatim.

Director John Hillcoat and his screenwriter Joe Penhall (“Mindhunter”) certainly benefited from the fact that the book is relatively simple and short (256 pages). This meant that – as with many other literary adaptations – too much of the plot had to be omitted or simplified. The filmmaker, whose brilliant anti-Western ‘The Proposition’ made a great impression on me, manages to create an atmosphere that completely captivates the audience.

The visuals by lead cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (“Thor 3: Day of Decision”) are almost exactly how I envisioned the story when I devoured the novel in just two evenings.

“Are we still the good guys?” the teenager asks his father in a particularly emotionally intense moment after a hair-raising experience. He answers immediately, almost too quickly: ‘Yes, that’s us!’ Judging by his eyes and the son’s facial reaction, neither of them are yet sure that this is really the case.

It is precisely this ambivalence and the question of which actions are still ethically responsible or mentally acceptable for survival that makes ‘The Road’ so attractive to me.

Anyone who is not afraid to be touched inside and think about what they saw and almost physically experienced even days later will enjoy this heartbreaking story full of despair and fear, but also love, courage and dignity and will no longer forgotten.

It’s clearly Mortensen’s film. The mostly very brief appearances of “Memento” star Guy Pearce, Hollywood veteran Robert Duvall (“The Godfather”, “Apocalypse Now”), Molly Parker from the “Lost In Space” revival and the always entertaining Garret Dillahunt (“Deadwood “) and Michael K. Williams (“The Wire”) plus of course Charlize Theron in flashbacks and dream sequences enrich it enormously.

Without “The Road” no “The Walking Dead”?

By the way: if you watch the film, which was shot in 2008 and released in local cinemas in 2010, it becomes clear how much the creators of the popular zombie series “The Walking Dead” repeatedly used “The Road”. This ranges from the oppressive, dark basic mood and recurring moral dilemmas to entire storylines such as father-son dynamics or areas of terrorist gangs.

Individual motifs, such as philosophical-looking graffiti, terrifying ghost towns or abandoned highways full of car wrecks, as well as visual aspects such as special camera angles, seem to have been reproduced almost 1:1: The Road’s influence on the super-popular TV franchise is, in my opinion, all too clear.

Fans of the series should definitely see the work, which was filmed in real locations in the US states of Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Oregon. The same goes for people who love “Children Of Men”, “The Book Of Eli”, “I Am Legend” or the classic “The Omega Man”. These are all far more dynamic and/or sensational than the slow burner, which is for the most part cleverly slowed down and consistently grandiosely melancholy.

‘The Road’ gives the audience time and space to empathize and think for themselves. Precisely because this is so easy to do despite the apocalyptic scenario, the film got under my skin and still gets under my skin.