Saw “Road to Perdition” today. While I don’t think it’s a masterpiece like Xkot does, it does do some things masterfully well.
What I kept thinking while I was watching it, and more so since I left the theater, is how it masters a mood. Not only a mood, but a sense of time and place that are rarely seen in movies today. So many times a period movie seems just that, actors with costumes walking around a fake set, like Enterprise crew members on the holodeck. You can just feel in your bones how fake everything is. Not this movie. It seems real; it seems like we’re in 1931. Even the presence of Tom Hanks doesn’t ruin that feeling, both because he can be an amazing actor, and because he has such a weathered, pushed-in face now that you can imagine him as a beaten-down mob enforcer.
The story is sort of thin, but if you look at it as a graphic novel come to life (which is what it is), it’s wondrous. Every shot is like a Hopper painting. It may be a triumph of style over substance, but it’s a beautiful ride.
What else would you expect from the “American Beauty” guy?
The weaving of light/dark, silence/noise, and, as you point out, the feel of the story (whether inside or out) was incredible.