You know, life is a bit like a road, yeah? Growing up and shit. Where does the road end? Where does it begin? Fucking QUESTIONS, man.
This is an astoundingly insincere film. The basic premise: in a quasi-post-apocalyptic America, Viggo Mortensen and his stupid son have to journey south in the hope of finding shelter, supplies and warmth – but are faced with the ever-present danger of roaming cannibal gangs. While mankind’s near destruction seems to be implicated as having been something of our own doing (it’s easy to infer references to global warming), the film strains endlessly to re-affirm capitalistic, conservative family values. When the son delights in drinking his first (and perhaps the planet’s last), battered can of coke, it’s difficult not to laugh with sheer revulsion. Equally so, the positive reviews it will inevitably receive for being “heart-warming” should be seen as a testament to our own vain aversion to open discursive analysis of our society or it inequities
Words: Oisín Murphy
