Viggo Mortensen plays the Man.  In a post apocalyptic world , where there is little hope of mankind surviving and many have resorted to cannibalism to survive, the Man and his young son who is born on the eve of destruction, now about 10, are traveling to the coast in hopes of finding a better life.  Not withstanding the the subject matter, this adaption of Cormac Mccarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning book, tells a tale of a love between a father and his son, and his son for the father.  There are some very graphic grizzle scenes of inhumanity and pure animal survival, throughout which the Man, tries his best to live up to being one of the " good guys" in his son's eyes.

There are some very minor supporting parts like that of the man's  wife played by Charlize Theron, and old man on the road played by Robert Duvall, and another survivor just trying to get by with his family, Guy Pearce.  Any one of these performances and especially Duvall's are all worth the price of admission.  What is hard is to put yourself in this man's shoes.  How would we fair under these conditions ? At the times the dialog is sparse but that only serves to heighten the acting and non verbal communication between actors.  

Viggo Mortensen, like so many actors in the past must have jumped at the opportunity to play the starved emaciated man.  I don' t know how much weight he lost for the role, but it reminds of Tom hanks in Castaway, or Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley.  There are only a handful of actors that go so deep into character, that the real person is lost for a while.  Dainel Day Lewis, Robert De Niro, and in his youth Marlon Brando delivered performances that deep.  I can not give Viggo enough praise for his work, he has matured in the last decade to play some interesting characters, and I think the breakthrough roll would have to be the brutal task master of the Navy Seal trainers in "G.I. Jane" where he almost upstages the star Demi Moore. 

I have not read the book, but now after the successful movie that the Coen Brothers did with No Time for Old Men , and  the success of  "All the Pretty Horses" it is time for me to step up to the plate and dig deeper into the source materials and read the books.  So as gruesome and loathsome of an overall subject matter in the most horrible of times, we have a very special relationship and love between a man and his boy, and some adventures in survival and faith.  I don't recommend this for entertainment value but if you want to see a great story within this genre of a post apocalypse world with some great and superb acting I can highly recommend it.