I’m the first to admit I’m not a member of the Cormac McCarthy screen adaptation fan club. I liked its performances but thought No Country for Old Men was shamelessly overrated and obtuse, and now that McCarthy’s Pulitizer Prize winning The Road, has been adapted, I can’t even say I like the performances. Filmmakers are hoping there will be Oscar nominations. I think not.

No one does vacant better than Viggo Mortensen, but you grow weary quickly of his terse character. He simply has nowhere to go. He and his son, dressed in tattered, filthy rags, wander aimlessly in an effort to survive a bleak, gray, post-apocalyptical world. They’re constantly cold, hungry, and afraid of other people who may want to eat them. This is no country for anybody, but the father attempts to teach the son the survival skills he’ll need to continue on in this harsh reality, after the father’s inevitable death. You’d think the boy, played by young Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee, might have toughened up a bit after spending all his life on the desolate road and never having seen the color green, but he still manages high pitched whining, squealing and crying at every turn. I know, I know, he’s supposed to be the hope for humanity in the film, but I just found him annoying.

Actually, I found the entire film annoying. Just what everyone wants to see around the holidays; a hopeless, helpless world where all plant and animal life--except for humans--has pretty much been wiped out, and the humans are barely hanging in there. Australian play write John Hillcoat, working on a script adapted by Joe Penhall, seems so intent on staying true to the original story that he forgets to add any cinematic color, both literally and figuratively. Nick Cave , who frequently collaborates with Hillcoat, wrote a listless score. The film, like its characters, amble along suffering, suffering, ever suffering, one atrocity after the next. It isn’t surprising that they never really go anywhere. But I will be surprised if the film does.

Rated R

--Lisa Johnson Mandell