While The Road is not without its impressive aspects, it has not efficiently pulled taut the slack created by the loss of McCarthy’s commanding prose. And so, it is hard to avoid the sense that it needn’t have been made at all.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2024

Plan to see it twice—once to familiarize yourself with its unconventional, non-commercial method of storytelling, and a second time that allows you to submerge into the material, to appreciate how stunningly composed it is.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 30, 2023

While such a depressing, disturbing and disquieting conceit will not be everyone's ideal of almost two hours entertainment, The Road is one of the great films of the 21st century.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 31, 2023

I still recommend The Road; just keep in mind that this is Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic tale, not Richard Matheson's.

| Sep 13, 2022

One of the more impressive displays of solemn storytelling and superb acting seen this year.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 29, 2020

The sensation this harrowing film evokes in the viewer is one that feels far more appropriate for a story dealing with catastrophe - gut-clenching dread.

| Nov 26, 2020

Somehow I am captivated by what I see in 'The Road', John Hillcoat's post-apocalyptic drama adapted from Cormac McCarthy's work. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 5, 2020

The opposite of escapist entertainment, this rugged and wearing screen experience is tough, uncompromising stuff.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 26, 2020

The Road may appear - at face value at least - to be a muted, subdued and frankly rather quiet approximation of an Apocalypse. But it's precisely this that gives it so much power.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 29, 2019

One of the more interesting films to come out in 2009.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 16, 2019

Hillcoat and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe have successfully recreated the barren, grey, burnt out landscape... Mortensen is admirable as the man journeying with his son and it's bleak in a way that Hollywood rarely dares to be.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 4, 2018

I cannot say how faithful this is but, having read other McCarthy books, would say the novel probably repaid your attention with its astonishing prose. This, though, puts you through the wringer, but doesn't repay you in any way.

| Aug 30, 2018

It's fascinating to see the world become an empty vessel, but all The Road pours back into it are hollow truisms.

| May 23, 2018

It wasn't fascinating at all. The movie looked like it cost $500 to make, excluding actors' salaries, which were worth another $500.

| Jan 16, 2018

I'm not asking for the end of the world to be a thrill-ride, but maybe it could have been less of a meretricious trudge.

| Nov 27, 2017

Even with the brief cameos by Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce, The Road doesn't meet expectations.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 11, 2017

The Road is a murky harbinger of our future, but perhaps more urgently, a cautionary tale clearly reflecting our present.

| Aug 8, 2017

A remarkable, haunting picture worth multiple viewings.

| Sep 24, 2014

The Road is one of the year's strongest dramas. But it's no picnic, to say the least.

| Mar 11, 2014

There's about as much action as My Dinner With Andre.

| Feb 17, 2014