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Tania Guerra Macías

Professor Santana Quintana

Estudios de Cultura Popular

16 January 2020

Road to Perdition — Scene Analysis

Sam Mendes — who was recently awarded the Golden Globe of Best Director for

1917 — is a well-known filmmaker, particularly famous for American Beauty (1999).

However, the film that will be analyzed in this essay is a less known work of Mendes:

Road to Perdition (2002). Based on the graphic novel sharing the same name, this film

tells the story of Michael Sullivan and his son, Mike, during the winter of 1931. Father

and son are obliged to run away from their home in Illinois and from the Irish mob to

which Michael belonged, after the boy accidentally witnessed a multiple murder by his

father and Connor, the son of his boss, John Rooney. This accident leads to the murder of

Michael’s wife and younger son, which at the same time makes him seek vengeance at

all costs while he runs away with his now only son. The film was well-received by the

critics, and the leading performances of Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan and Paul

Newman as John Rooney — who got an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting

Role — were well regarded. However, the most effusively praised aspect of this film is

the cinematography, which made Conrad L. Hall be posthumously awarded the Oscar of

Best Cinematography.

Although Road to Perdition can be considered a crime film, or even a film noir,

it is above all a film about father-and-son relationships and the cost of violence and

revenge. The first theme is clearly shown in the relationship between Michael Sullivan

and his son, but also between John Rooney and his son Connor — in fact, we can find a

parallel between Michael and Rooney, as they are both fathers trying to protect their son,
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though for different reasons and in different ways. We cannot forget as well the

relationship between Michael and Rooney himself, as he was not only his boss but also a

father to Michael, he raised him and loved him like his own child, reason why Connor

got jealous of him and decided to kill Michael’s wife and son when he got the chance.

The second theme is present in the fact that it is violence that drives the series of events

every time — Mike witnesses the mob’s violent actions, so his family is murdered, which

makes Michael kill Rooney and Connor, and in the end leads to his death. Nevertheless,

we can see that Michael knows that violence is not the way to a happy life, which is the

reason why he does what it takes to prevent his son from following his footsteps.

The scene this essay will deal with takes place almost at the end of the film

(1:34:03 – 1:37:23). The five aspects that will be analyzed are the narrative, the staging,

the cinematography, the editing and finally, the sound. Though some aspects related to

the film as a whole might be mentioned to make the understanding of the essay possible,

the analysis will focus on this particular scene.

From a narrative point of view, this scene is the climax of the story — it is the

moment when the protagonist, Michael, takes revenge on John Rooney. However, it is

not the climax because of the violence, but because of its dramatic power: Michael must

kill Rooney to revenge his wife and son, but at the same time Rooney was like a father to

him and deep inside he knows that it was not Rooney’s decision to murder his family, but

Connor’s. The narrative within the whole film is driven by psychological causality, and

particularly in this scene, we can see that on the fact that killing Rooney was Michael’s

decision: he could have just run away with his son, but because of his personality traits,

he chose revenge instead. Road to Perdition is an example of a flashback-framed film,

which at the same time gives it a circular structure (it begins with Mike’s voice in off,
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introducing the story, and it finishes with his voice in off again, concluding it), so we can

say that this scene is part of a flashback.

Concerning the range of information, we find unrestricted narration in this scene:

although Mike begins to tell the story (becoming an intradiegetic voice-over narrator), he

is not present at this moment, but we are watching what is happening — the audience

knows more information than the characters. This happens because Mike acts as a narrator

only at the beginning and at the end, but during the majority of the film the source of

narration is not recognizable (just the camera). The last aspect we must highlight

regarding the narration, it is its subjectivity: we are sharing the characters’ feelings, and

elements like the music and the editing of certain shots contribute to this vision and are

used to make the audience feel in a certain way.

Moving onto the staging, or mise en scène, we will discuss the setting, the lighting

and the acting and choreography of the actors. This scene takes place first at O’Neill’s

bar and then in the street right outside the bar, and it was shot in a studio in Los Angeles.

Although the scene begins in the bar, we only get to see the characters leaving, and the

majority of the scene takes place outside. The setting is realistic — the actors’clothing

and the car on the street match the time in which the story is set, 1931 — but there are

certain elements that stylize it such as the lighting and choreography, which will be

discussed later on. In this scene we perceive the great importance of a prop: Michael’s

assault rifle. This prop had appeared several times before in the film (becoming a motif),

and on one occasion it was accompanied by the same music that sounds in this scene,

foreshadowing the importance of this gun.

The use of lighting is also crucial: it increases the dramatism in the scene. Added

to the streetlights, there is an artificial beam of light from above that illuminates the part

of the road where Rooney and his men are standing next to the car (1a), but the rest of the
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road remains in the shadow (1b). The use of this lighting serves a specific purpose: the

moment when Michael walks towards Rooney under the light to kill him would not have

been so powerful had he not been out of sight at first. We can also appreciate the use of

low-key lighting, particularly when we see closer shots, for instance (2a), we see how

many shadows are created in the character’s face for dramatism. In this shot the use of

side lighting is also remarkable.

The brilliant performances of Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan and Paul Newman

as John Rooney are worth to be commented on. The most relevant aspect of their

performance is the interaction with each other by long, meaningful gazes, the reason why

dialogue is almost completely absent. The only spoken line is Rooney’s “I’m glad it’s

you”, because being a criminal, he knew that a tragic end would come to him sooner or

later, so at least he is glad at being murdered by Michael, whom he considered his son

and had good reasons to kill him. The attention to detail in terms of choreography is

evident as well, Rooney’s men stand almost forming a circle under the beam of light (1a),

and when the shootout starts, they start falling dead one by one as the camera pans slowly

(3a, 3b), keeping Rooney in the middle of the shot, who does not move nor react (3c).

The cinematography in this scene is a key element to be examined — we must not

forget that Conrad L. Hall was awarded the Oscar of Best Cinematography for this film.

The film is shot in color, and we can guess by its grainy look that fast film stock was

used. Moreover, it is shot at a normal speed for sound films (24 frames per second), and

the lense used is a wide-angle, generating a wider angle of view and depth of field (4a).

In this scene, sometimes a shallow focus is used, as we can see because in some shots

there are blurred elements while others are in focus (4b). We must highlight a specific

moment when a rack focus is used to enhance the dramatism in the scene: a blurry figure

stands behind Rooney (5a); Rooney turns around and sees the man who is about to murder
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him, Michael (5b). The angle used in the majority of this scene is the straight-on angle,

and in terms of distance, we can see long shots (1a), medium-long shots (4b), medium

shots (6a), medium close-ups (2a) and close-ups (6b).

Camera movement is also relevant in this scene: first we watch two establishing

shots to indicate the location — the first one inside O’Neill’s, the second one outside —

that make use of a pan and a tilt (probably a crane shot) respectively. Other camera

movements such as the pan mentioned previously when Rooney’s men are falling dead

one by one, function as a way to cause an impact on the audience and highlight the

dramatism of the moment. The camera also moves towards Rooney’s face to make us

sympathize with him (from 6a to 5a).

On another note, editing — and especially pace — also contributes to the

brilliance of this scene. As I mentioned before, the first shots are establishing ones, and

they have longer duration, creating a slower pace. When Rooney finds the chauffer dead

in the car, the scene increases its rhythm, using shots of shorter duration. This faster pace

continues during the shootout, but it is interrupted by a longer shot of eighteen seconds:

the pan in which Rooney’s men fall one by one. Once Rooney’s men are dead, we get to

see a shadowy figure approaching Rooney, using shots or longer duration, for example

the one in which the rack focus is used (twenty-three seconds). The dramatic moment

when Michael and Rooney glance at each other retakes a faster pace, making use of

reaction shots of both of the characters, but in the end, when Michael shoots his gun, a

longer shot is used — twenty-nine seconds — where we only see his face and hear the

off-screen sound of the gun (the death of Rooney is not shown, so it is considered off-

screen violence). The final two shots show how the neighbours are looking into the street

from their houses (making use of a diagonal camera movement), and how Michael stands

between all the bodies and finally leaves, disappearing again into the darkness. These
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final shots also have a slower pace, as did the establishing ones. During the whole scene,

continuity editing is used, trying to make the cuts invisible.

The final point to be analysed in this scene is one of the most noteworthy aspects

of it: the sound. Although at the very beginning of the scene we just hear the natural

sounds of a group of people leaving a bar and the rain (which are diagetic elements), when

they go outside, we start hearing the extradiegetic music. The track that is playing at this

moment, called “Ghosts” and composed by Thomas Newman, had actually sounded

before in the film, when Michael was placing his rifle inside a cupboard after his son had

witnessed by accident the murder he commited. That moment can be seen as a

foreshadowing of the shootout, because not only the music is the same, but he murders

Rooney and his men with that gun. The volume of the music increases and the other

sounds completely disappear, so during the majority of the scene we only hear this track.

The lack of sounds like the gun shots is something very remarkable, one possibility is that

the director preferred to omit the sounds of the gun when Michael was killing Rooney’s

men as a way to shock the audience even more in Rooney’s death, when we do hear the

shots. When Michael is walking towards John Rooney, we start hearing the rain again,

and the only line in this scene is uttered by Rooney: “I’m glad it’s you”. The choice of

reducing dialogue to the minimum is very powerful, as we can see that from Michael’s

part, there is nothing that can be said, he speaks through his silence.

We can conclude that Road to Perdition is much more than a gangster film or

film noir. It is a film that explores deep themes such as father-and-son relationships, that

depicts complex characters and their feelings, and most importantly, it does all this while

showing beautiful and precise shots and photography. This film succeeds in what many

others keep failing nowadays: it makes the best out of the image, the soundtrack and the

performance of the actors, rather than just relying on dialogue.