I made my first foray into Cormac McCarthy’s work a few months back, reading The Road in anticipation of the film’s winter release. I was a bit luke warm on the book and found his style more annoying than impressive (I’ll say it again, post apocalyptic, post punctuation). What I did appreciate about the novel was how vividly he portrayed the world. It is a stark and frighteningly empty world. You can’t help feeling lost and a bit scared in the midst of it. Unfortunately, I felt almost no connection to the characters. I was therefore quite pleased to discover that it is in the audience’s connection with the characters that the film really shines.

I was a big fan of John Hillcoat’s last film The Propostion. Guy Pearce’s Charlie Burns was a complex and conflicted protagonist and Hillcoat’s close framing gave the viewer a personal connection to Burns. The strategy is the same and just as successful with Viggo’s unnamed “man.” The more appropriate moniker would have been “father,” as at its heart this is really a tale of a father’s bond with his son. Here we have the common parental emotion of a child’s importance taken to its literal extent. How far would you go to ensure your child’s survival? This is the territory mined in McCarthy’s novel – but it doesn’t really come to life until it plays out on Viggo’s face. I actually found myself experiencing the fear of losing a son – however I’m not a father.

This is the film’s incredible strength. You might be fooled into thinking this is a story about what happens after the world ends, but the post apocalyptic setting is just an unimportant backdrop. The story is what’s going on in the man’s head. This is what McCarthy was going for, but Hillcoat is better able to realize it in less than two hours of screen time.

Really I found very few missteps with the adaptation. The production design is executed perfectly. Joe Penhall’s script made the right concessions, cutting what felt repetitive and focusing on important scenes. Both Viggo and Robert Duvall are expectantly excellent and the boy, Kodi Smit-McPhee is only minimally annoying.

McCarthy’s world is a place not many would want to visit. But Hillcoat and company were able to take some pretty tough source material and create a subtle, emotional, and impressive experience – one that I enjoyed far more than the original.