Darkness Visible

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Perdition is a fancy word for hell. It's also one of those curiously ironic names 19th century settlers gave to odd corners of the American landscape. But Sam Mendes' darkly imaginative and powerfully enfolding movie Road to Perdition offers a third, more ironic definition: it's a kind of paradise, a sun-swept beach, complete with a playful, welcoming dog, that a man and his son struggle against malevolent forces to attain--and then lose in an instant.

The paradoxical title offers the best clue to the movie's complex meaning. This road is littered with bad intentions; almost everyone who embarks on it comes to a bad and bloody end. Yet for the youngest of its travelers, it leads out of darkness into light and eventually to a kind of enlightenment.

The time is 1931. The story begins in a medium-size city near Chicago. There Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) works as a hit man for mob boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), who has raised him as his son--a man who bewilderingly, entrancingly combines Irish bonhomie with ruthless criminality.

Michael is a silent man. He keeps his murderous secrets from his family, which leads a pious middle-class life. But little boys want to know what their fathers do for a living. So one night his young son (Tyler Hoechlin) sneaks a ride in Daddy's car and witnesses a murder committed by Rooney's natural son Connor (Daniel Craig). Connor does not trust Michael Jr.'s ability to keep a secret, so to ensure silence, he begins wiping out the entire Sullivan family. The survivors, the two Michaels, must now run, to Perdition (where the boy's aunt lives) and from it.

The grim situation causes anguish for the elder Rooney. He loves Michael far better than he does his natural son. But blood is thicker than affection; he must support the psychopath. There is deeper anguish for the senior Sullivan. It is not just that his wife and younger boy have been killed; it is that all the codes by which he has lived have been violated. These simple souls are driven by a blind and brutal fate; we know from the outset that they are as doomed as Oedipus.

What rescues the film from tragic schematization are two factors. One is the killer hired to track the Sullivans, Jude Law's Maguire. He's a crime-scene photographer who often commits the crimes he photographs. He is modernism's eerie representative: clever, amoral, unpredictable except for his insatiable bloodlust. He is one scary guy.

The second, perhaps more important to the success of the movie, is its brilliantly calculated style. The sun never shines during its first half. It's all winter light, pelting rain, dimly lit mansions--superbly realized by the great cinematographer Conrad Hall. But as the Sullivans scurry across the lonely Midwestern flats and as the lifelong silence between father and son begins to lift, so does the surrounding darkness. That Hanks at last finds redemption--that his son finally finds what's best in his father's nature--is an irony that is broadly but beautifully stated.

These events take place a lifetime ago. There will surely be viewers who will wonder about its relevance. But distance is one of tragedy's most important dimensions, lending objectivity to observation. That may be the most important distinction between Road to Perdition and Mendes' Oscar-winning American Beauty. This script, by David Self, makes no judgmental comments on the lives, deaths or Americanness of its principals. They are what they are: men twisting and turning, logically, hopelessly as they try to evade their fates.

Mendes' unhurried pace and classical framings reinforce the pensive mood. The many moments he permits his actors to shade their unimprovable performances are extraordinarily well spent. The stability with which this tale recounts radically unstable lives is its great virtue. Whether releasing this film at the height of summer's silly-movie season is a good idea, only next weekend will tell. One hopes moviegoers are in the mood for counterprogramming, that the virtues of impeccable craft and rigorous but partially forgiving morality will conquer the seasonal giddiness.