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| Saturday, April 21, 2007 01:46 PM |
| Road to Mediocrity |
 by Fëanor |
Road to Perdition - This is Max Allan Collins' graphic novel, upon which the relatively recent Tom Hanks film of the same title was based. I thought the film was really quite excellent, and even bought the soundtrack, so I decided it was only right and proper that I read the original graphic novel. To that end, I got it out of the library. And I have to say, I was a little disappointed. Collins' writing is rather dull, matter-of-fact, and over-explanatory. The art is black and white and incredibly detailed in a way that is sometimes very evocative and impressive, and other times just kind of freakish in an uncanny valley kind of way. The story starts out about the same as that of the movie, with some sequences proceeding in nearly identical fashion, in visuals and words, to those in the movie. But there are also huge differences, and while I admit I may be biased towards the film since I saw it first, I really think it's much better.
If you don't know, the basic story is set in and around Chicago during the Prohibition-era, includes a lot of real people and events, and focuses on a mob enforcer and killing machine named Michael O'Sullivan. O'Sullivan's kids love him, but don't really know what he does, until one of them tags along on O'Sullivan's latest mission and sees him kill a bunch of people. This moment changes the lives of Michael O'Sullivan and his son forever, and sets them on the run from mob killers, and on the road to a small town called Perdition, where they're hoping they can safely hide out.
The book ends up being a lot about the relationships between fathers and sons - between O'Sullivan and his son, and also to a much lesser extent between O'Sullivan's boss John Looney and his crazy son Connor Looney. The movie adds a lot more layers and complexity to the story by making O'Sullivan a sort of surrogate son to John, with Connor the jealous outsider. This interesting dynamic is completely missing from the book. Also missing from the book, to my great surprise, is probably my favorite character from the movie, a photographer and assassin named Harlen Maguire (played by Jude Law). I kept waiting for him to show up, and was very disappointed when he never did. He's a totally fascinating person, and the frighteningly talented villainous counterpart to Michael. He's the main villain of the film, but the book has no main villain or strong counterpart to Michael, and the story as a whole seems weaker without that.
Whereas the movie is loaded with beautiful music, amazing visuals, and a carefully constructed and very moving story, the graphic novel just sort of moves slowly along from bloody episode to bloody episode (it may actually be even more violent than the movie) before finally coming rather abruptly to its inevitable conclusion. It isn't a bad book, but it isn't particularly exciting or impressive, either. This is one case where I definitely recommend seeing the movie instead of reading the book. |
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