Road to Perdition

Road to Perdition is a sombre gangster film whose fairly simple story is inflated into more than it is by the handsome, atmospheric images of trench coats and gunfire in darkness and pouring rain.

The story begins in a provincial American town in the early 1930s. Michael Jr. has a good and secure everyday life with his little brother Peter and his parents, but gradually it dawns on him that his father does not go to work from nine to five like the other children's fathers. Michael Sr. does secret things at night, so one night the boy, out of sheer curiosity, sneaks along in his father's car. He witnesses how town boss John Rooney's psychopathic son Connor guns down a business associate in cold blood, and how his father covers Connor's tracks. Worse still, he is discovered, and that sets off an avalanche.

Connor has never been in his father's good books. Michael Sullivan, on the other hand, has been like a son to John Rooney. Now Connor sees a valid reason to get rid of the Sullivan family once and for all. It means the death of the mother and the youngest son. Father and son flee, but Sullivan wants to avenge his family. He gets no support from the Mafia, however, and certainly not from John Rooney, for blood is apparently thicker than friendship and loyalty.

Because Sullivan insists on taking revenge against the orders of the gangster bosses, he becomes a hunted man himself. The hitman Maguire is hot on their heels on the road to Perdition, the little town where they have family. The double meaning of the title lies in the fact that Perdition is not just the name of a town but also means damnation.

Alongside this revenge story unfolds a tale about the relationship between a boy and his father, who has never been a real father to his eldest son. At first father and son are estranged from each other, but as they go through a series of hardships together, they grow closer.