Road to Perdition is a 2002 American crime drama film directed and produced by Sam Mendes, from a screenplay by David Self, based on the first volume of the DC Comics graphic novel series by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner. It stars Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman (in his final live-action theatrical film role), Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stanley Tucci, and Daniel Craig. Set in 1931, during the Great Depression, the film follows a mob enforcer and his son as they seek vengeance against the mobster who murdered the rest of their family. The film explores themes such as father-son relationships and the consequences of violence.
Road to Perdition was screened at the 59th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2002, where it was nominated for the Golden Lion. The film was theatrically released in the United States on July 12, 2002, and was a box office success, grossing $183.4 million against its $80 million budget. Critics received it well and praised Mendes's direction, Conrad L. Hall's cinematography, and the cast's performances. At the 75th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Newman, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Art Direction. Hall was posthumously awarded the Oscar for Best Cinematography.
Plot
In the winter of 1931, Michael Sullivan Sr, is an orphaned enforcer of Irish Mob boss John Rooney in Rock Island, Illinois. His wife Annie knows of his work, but his two sons Michael Jr. and Peter do not. Rooney's associate Finn McGovern speaks at his brother's wake, insinuating that Rooney is responsible for his brother's death. Rooney sends Sullivan and his son Connor to talk with McGovern; Michael follows them and watches the interaction from hiding.
McGovern denies that his brother stole anything from the mob and implies that Connor was responsible, which causes Connor to murder McGovern and Sullivan to shoot the other armed witnesses in self-defense. The men discover that Michael saw everything and swear him to secrecy.
Rooney sends Sullivan to collect a debt from speakeasy owner Tony Calvino. Jealous and paranoid, Connor sends a letter with Sullivan for Calvino. Calvino reads the letter and reaches for his revolver, but Sullivan kills him and his bodyguard. The letter reads, "Kill Sullivan and all debts are paid". Sullivan rushes home and discovers that Connor, suspecting Michael has told others of the murders, has already murdered Annie and Peter. Michael was unharmed, as he had arrived home late from detention.
Sullivan and Michael flee Rock Island and head to Chicago to meet mobster Frank Nitti. Sullivan offers to work for the Chicago Outfit in exchange for permission to kill Connor. Nitti rejects his offer and advises Sullivan against seeking revenge. Rooney, listening next door with Connor, reluctantly allows Nitti to dispatch contract killer Harlen Maguire, whom Nitti orders to kill Sullivan.
Sullivan plans to take Michael to his aunt's beach house in Perdition as a haven. Maguire tracks them to a roadside diner, where he and Sullivan converse casually while Michael sleeps in the car. Sensing danger, Sullivan escapes from Maguire with Michael, and Maguire kills a police officer in the process. Sullivan realises Maguire knows their destination, and begins robbing the banks that hold the Outfit's money, hoping to pressure the Outfit into withdrawing their protection from Connor. Sullivan teaches Michael to drive so that he can act as a getaway driver.
When the mob withdraws its money from its banks, Sullivan interrogates Rooney's accountant, Alexander Rance. Rance stalls Sullivan until Maguire appears with a shotgun. During the shootout and escape, Maguire and Sullivan wound each other and Rance is killed in the crossfire. Sullivan collapses from his wound, and Michael drives them to a farm where an elderly couple helps Sullivan recover.
The ledgers reveal that Connor has been embezzling from his father using dead men's names, including McGovern's. Believing that Rooney will give up Connor once he knows the truth, Sullivan returns to Rock Island and confronts Rooney, who is already aware of Connor's treachery. Sullivan states that Connor will be dead anyway once Rooney dies; Rooney still refuses to give up his son, urging Sullivan to flee with Michael and raise him to be a better man than either of them. Sullivan later ambushes and kills Rooney's bodyguards before reluctantly killing Rooney. Nitti reveals Connor's location after Sullivan promises to end the feud with Connor's death. Sullivan goes to the hotel room where Connor is hiding and kills him.
The Sullivans finally reach the beach house in Perdition. While Michael is outside, Sullivan enters the house, where Maguire shoots him in the back. Michael appears and points a gun at Maguire, and Sullivan fatally shoots Maguire while he is distracted. Sullivan is happy that his son did not shoot, and then dies in Michael's arms.
Michael drives the car back to the elderly couple's farm and stays with them. In his narration, Michael states he has not held a gun since his father's death, and when asked if his father was a good man, he simply answers, "He was my father".
Cast
Production Development When Max Allan Collins wrote the graphic novel Road to Perdition, his book agent saw potential in the story as a film adaptation and showed it to a film agent. By 1999, the novel had reached Dean Zanuck, who was the vice president of development at the company owned by his father, producer Richard D. Zanuck. The novel was sent to the elder Zanuck in Morocco, who was there producing Rules of Engagement (2000). The Zanucks agreed on the story's prospect and sent it to director-producer Steven Spielberg. Shortly afterward, Spielberg set up the project at his studio DreamWorks, though he did not pursue the film's direction due to his full slate.
Sam Mendes sought a new project after completing American Beauty (1999) and explored prospects including A Beautiful Mind, K-PAX, The Shipping News, and The Lookout. DreamWorks sent Mendes Road to Perdition as a prospect, and Mendes was attracted to the story, considering it "narratively very simple, but thematically very complex". Mendes specified one theme being that the parents' world is inaccessible to their children. Mendes considered the story's theme to be about how children deal with violence and whether exposure to violence would render children violent themselves. Mendes described the script as having "no moral absolutes", a factor that appealed to the director.
Writing Spielberg first contacted screenwriter David Self to adapt the story into a feature film. Self wrote an initial draft that remained close to the source material and retained most of its dialogue. The screenplay was then rewritten by uncredited writers, distancing the script from the graphic novel but leaving the core elements of the story intact. Some of the harsher aspects of the story were toned down as the script became more streamlined. For example, in some early drafts of the screenplay, Sullivan became an alcoholic, but this element was ultimately absent from the final version.
The story is deeply informed by the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series. Novelist Max Allan Collins acknowledged the influence of Lone Wolf and Cub on his graphic novel Road to Perdition in an interview with the BBC, declaring that "Road To Perdition is 'an unabashed homage' to Lone Wolf and Cub".Allan Collins, Max. Interviewed by Daniel Etherington,. BBC Collective. September 19, 2002.
Some characters' names were slightly changed from their original versions in the graphic novel: the surname of the real-life gangsters John Looney and his son Connor were changed to Rooney, and the surname of Tom Hanks' character and his family was streamlined from the original O'Sullivan to simply Sullivan. One significant addition to the script was the creation of Maguire to provide a persistent element of pursuit to the Sullivans' departure from the old world.
Hanks and cinematographer Conrad Hall requested Mendes to limit violence in the film to meaningful acts rather than gratuitous carnage. Hanks' character, Michael Sullivan, is known as "The Angel of Death" and invokes fear in those around him, but his infamy is downplayed in the film. Mendes, who described the graphic novel as "much more pulpy", sought to reduce the graphic novel's background to its essence, seeking the "nonverbal simplicity" of films like Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and films by Akira Kurosawa that lack dialogue. Duplicate language in characters' confrontations in Road to Perdition was trimmed to the absolute minimum. Mendes described Road to Perdition as a "poetic, elegiac story, in which the pictures tell the true story". An example of one such unspoken scene in the film was the piano duet between Rooney and Michael Sr., intended to convey their relationship without words. In the final 20 minutes of Road to Perdition, the script was written to have only six lines of dialogue.
Max Allan Collins originally wanted to write the adapted screenplay, but was not given the opportunity. Collins chose to stay out of the scripting process out of respect for the different writing styles for a different medium, though he served as a consultant. Collins praised the addition of Maguire and considered the minimalist use of dialogue to be appropriate. The author also applauded the film's version of Rooney as "more overtly a father figure" to Sullivan.
Collins opposed the profanity in the script, as the vulgar language did not fit his vision of the 1930s. Collins also contested the path of Sullivan's son in the film. In the graphic novel, the son kills once; in the film, Michael does not kill anyone. Collins also disagreed with the film's narration technique. In the novel, the son narrates the story as an adult, becoming a priest, while in the film, Michael narrates while still a young boy.
Casting Tom Hanks was sent a copy of the graphic novel by Steven Spielberg while he was filming Cast Away. Initially too busy to make sense of the story, Hanks later received David Self's adapted screenplay, which he became attached to. Hanks, a father to four children, described Michael Sullivan's role, "I just got this guy. If you're a man, and you've got offspring ... emotionally, it's devastating."
Tyler Hoechlin was chosen from over 2,000 candidates to portray Michael Sullivan's son. The actor was 13 years old while filming. In scenes in which Hoechlin's character assists his father as a getaway driver, Hoechlin is trained by a driving instructor.
Paul Newman was unanimously the first choice for the role of John Rooney. The actor prepared by requesting Frank McCourt, the Irish-American author of Angela's Ashes, to record a tape of his voice.
David Self, who created the Maguire character, explained, "He gets so jaded from exposure to this world, he steps over the line from being the storyteller to being the story maker." To capture the "seedy countenance" of the character, Jude Law was given a sallow skin tone that reflected the wear from working in a darkroom. Law's teeth also received a lower gumline and had a rotted look. Law was also given a weak, thinning hairline. Maguire's apartment also displays a collection of photographs of dead bodies, some of them actual police stills from the 1930s.
Stanley Tucci was selective about roles in gangster films, believing that Hollywood stereotyped Italian-Americans as gangsters. However, attracted by the prospect of working with Mendes, the actor accepted the role of Nitti, a real-life Mob boss from Chicago.