(Rated R, 119 mins.)
…is a road paved to hell as seen through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy Michael (Tyler Hoechlin) whose father Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) is an Irish mobster circa 1930, Chicago. John Rooney (Paul Newman) rules the town the way God rules the world. His son, Connor Rooney (Daniel Craig) fight for his father’s favors, desperately competing with Sullivan for his attention. When the competition gets out of hand, the crime leads into their private lives, the innocent die, and suddenly it’s a game of combative relationships between fathers and sons. Sam Mendes follows up his Oscar winning “American Beauty” starring no more Mr. Nice Guy Hanks, who’s as powerful in a dark role as he was in “Castaway.”. The gangster evoking black on gray scenery thrusts the viewer into the dismal life of young Michael as together we learns the truth at every depressing turn. The pacing is slow yet each scene glues you to the screen. as one atrocity after another teaches a boy honor and religion in a crooked and painful world. Each actor is well cast and holds his role. Jude Law as the Reporter with a death fetish behind a camera or as he says “I shoot the dead”, the way the gangsters shoot the living.
