Road to Perdition (MA 15+) PRESENTED IN 35MM FILM

Road to Perdition (MA 15+, 2002) Presented in 35mm Film by The Revival House Perth

During the Great Depression, Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) works as an enforcer for Irish mob boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), a man who has served as a surrogate father to him. When Sullivan's young son Michael Jr. secretly witnesses his father commit a brutal killing, a chain of betrayal is set in motion that shatters Sullivan's family and forces him onto a desperate road of vengeance and survival. With his son now his only surviving family, Sullivan flees across the Midwest, robbing banks connected to the mob while hunting the man responsible for destroying his life, all while trying to shield his son from the violence and moral compromise that has defined his own existence, and prevent history from repeating itself in the next generation.

Director Sam Mendes crafts a visually stunning, elegiac crime drama that transforms gangster film conventions into something closer to Greek tragedy. Tom Hanks delivers a restrained, morally complex performance as a man forced to confront the violent life he's built, while Paul Newman, in one of his final film roles, brings weathered gravitas and quiet menace to the conflicted patriarch Rooney. Conrad L. Hall's Academy Award-winning cinematography renders the Depression-era Midwest with painterly, rain-soaked beauty, using shadow and composition to underscore the film's themes of fatherhood, legacy, and inherited violence. Thomas Newman's haunting score reinforces the film's mournful tone, while the central father-son relationship at its core gives emotional weight to what could otherwise be conventional genre material, elevating the film into a meditation on the cyclical nature of violence and the desperate hope of breaking free from it.

Original format and audio experience of this film faithfully reproduced by The Revival House. Presented in 35mm film unless noted otherwise.

When: Sunday, September 6th at 6:30PM
Where: The Revival House at the Como Theatre
Rating: MA 15+ (Medium level violence)