The Road (2009)

Brilliantly bleak disaster/survival story adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy. 

An unnamed man and his son (Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel across the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic America following an unnamed disaster. 

It’s horrifying in places (there’s a recurring thread about vigilante bands of cannibals roaming the land), but it’s also a tender drama about the love between a boy and his father. 

The film asks you to consider what value life has after everything else has been lost. I like the way it doesn’t try to explain the event that led to this chaos. Instead, it just puts you straight into the situation and lets you stare it in the face.

Slow West (2015)

Odd western directed by John Maclean.  

Kodi Smit-McPhee plays a young Scotsman searching for the woman he loves in the American West. He is guided by a bounty hunter played by Michael Fassbender. The premise is good and the two leads are intriguing, but something about the film doesn’t quite work. 

The characters could have been better drawn. Also, the situation didn’t ring true. Would there really have been a bounty in America for a crime committed in Europe? 

It’s not emotionally involving and probably not trying to be, either. There are a couple of welcome flashes of humour, and more of that would have been nice.