Revolutionary Road

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Revolutionary Road

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Revolutionary Road

Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kathryn Hahn, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, David Harbour, Dylan Baker, Richard Easton, Zoe Kazan, Ryan Simpkins, Ty Simpkins

Frank and April, a married couple in the 1950s, have always seen themselves as special, different, ready and willing to live their lives based on higher ideals. So, as soon as they move into their new...( read more  read more... ) house on Revolutionary Road, they proudly declare their independence from the suburban inertia that surrounds them and determine never to be trapped by the social confines of their era. Yet for all their charm, beauty and irreverence, the Wheelers find themselves becoming exactly what they didn't expect: a good man with a routine job whose nerve has gone missing; a less-than-happy homemaker starving for fulfillment and passion; an American family with lost dreams, like any other. Driven to change their fates, April hatches an audacious plan to start all over again, to leave the comforts of Connecticut behind for the great unknown of Paris. But when the plan is put in motion, each spouse is pushed to extremes--one to escape whatever the cost, the other to save all that they have, no matter the compromises.

Id: 10966054

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Revolutionary Road Recent Reviews
  • binky013
    November 3, 2009
    binky013
    Wow . . . If you know me, you know that Kate Winslet is on my all-time favorite actors list. For me to put a living actor on my all-time favorite list takes some great work. If you know me, you also know that Leonardo DiCaprio not only is not on my all-time favorite actor list,...( read more) but has about as much chance making that list as the proverbial snowball in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

    So you can imagine my surprise when I finally bit the bullet to watch this and found myself pretty much blown away by DiCaprio's work.

    Now unlike my turning point with, say, Tom Hanks in Da Vinci or Brad Pitt in Devil's Own, I'm not going to be able to say that I might try to re-evaluate my position on DiCaprio's past work. I'm sure my evaluation of his past work is correct: He's not (been) much of an actor. I will say this, however. I'm willing to watch with an unjaundiced eye what DiCaprio does from here on in, to see if he's finally matured into a good actor.

    Kate Winslet does not disappoint, by the way. I believe she is easily the finest actress of her generation. Stunningly good, really. So good, yet again, that she really does deserve to be listed with the greatest actresses of all-time.

    But to reiterate, especially for those of you who know how I've talked about DeCaprio in the past, this is a must-see for his work as well.

    NB: Be in a good mood when you catch this one. I tell you true that this is a draining full-fledged tragedy with little to bring you up from the depths when the final credits roll.
  • DerekA101
    August 8, 2009
    DerekA101
    A bit of a slow, melodramatic tale of a married couple's so-called "boring" life in the suburbs in the 1950s. I'm really not a fan of these types of movies because I don't think life in the suburbs is as mundane as Hollywood portrays it... but that's just me.

    Leonardo DiCaprio

    ...( read more) and Kate Winslet were absolutely phenomenal here... in fact, their tremendous acting is the only thing that keeps this film a float. The first 3/4 of this film was fairly dull and unengaging, but the final act was worth the wait and even bumped my rating up a whole star.

    All in all, Revolutionary Road is not a film I'd watch again, but it's worth a view. I didn't think it deserved to be a Best Picture Oscar nominee because there were host of other films that got snubbed that were better, but it's not a total waste of time.

    I thought it was kind of amusing as well that the only sane person in this film happened to be the crazy, insane guy.
  • AgentLexi2132
    July 13, 2009
    AgentLexi2132
    ''Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.''

    A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to r...( read more)aise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.

    Leonardo DiCaprio: Frank Wheeler

    It's been a long ten years since Sam Mendes' debut picture American Beauty. That's a really long time for audiences and fans of Mendes. People forget a film's essence and directors reintegrate old idealologies into a new piece of film, to the shocking dispair of us film critics. Benjamin Button did that to the humble Forest Gump, and Mendes has done it with his latest project. I'm not bold enough to make the claim that he simply re-did American Beauty as Revolutionary Road but the two are very similar. That's OK since American Beauty won several awards in various countries. It's still a worth a ticket price, but people will forget about this film in five years as American Beauty resurfaces in their minds.

    The film is adapted from Richard Yates' extremely well-received novel, first published in 1961. It is an examination of American suburbia that blossomed in the '50s and the problems therein. Now, I think that such an observation would be especially meaningful when made in its own time but not as much now. Many other people, including Mendes himself, have already produced Revolutionary Road in both film and other media. This forces the movie to rely on something additional besides its tired premise. Revolutionary Road offers viewers a disturbingly lifelike representation of a failing marriage. Winslet and DiCaprio are so good that I found myself reveling in the chaos. After their characters marry and become parents, both actors are constantly uneasy and stiffened by uneasiness. Neither portrayal is subdued, but rather fiery and inflamed, bordering on hatred even. Even when they are not verbally abusing each other, both are under veils of artificial emotion. There are no feel-good elements to the picture. Revolutionary Road is as effective as any gruesome exploitative film in never allowing its audience a moment's respite. It's different from American Beauty in that specific way, the story is pessimistic while its parent is inspiring, yet in this way it is truer to life than it's predecessor ever was.

    The bulk of the film was centred around their joint decision to uproot their family (and the children whom we rarely see) and move to Paris, so that DiCaprio's Frank would be able to live out his dream, of finding out his true calling. This would mean selling all their assets, crossing the steamship the other way round (which I chuckled at, and wonder if we're really going to see that at all), and having his wife support him (because the Europeans pay secretaries exorbitant salaries) while he mucks around for inspiration to life. This would also mean bidding Sayonara to his dead end job, until Murphy so decides to throw a spanner in the works with Frank gaining much needed recognition.
    Kate Winslet's April seemed to be the all-sacrificing wife, until her frequent breakdowns seem to cast doubts on her sanity, having to fight like mad with her husband, only to put on a more cordial front every morning at breakfast. One can only guess that she's doing her best to keep things from breaking down, but there's only a limit to how many holes in a sinking ship you can deter. In fact, the film develops at a pace with which paint dries, and comes alive only when Frank and April trade verbal punches of tidal wave proportions, with hurting insults flying both directions with the threat of physical violence always one step behind, as if in shadow.

    ''I want to feel things. Really feel them.''

    This Revolutionary Road is about the hypocrisy that we are all semi-aware of, yet choose to play the social charade and get a mental kick out of laughing the unrealness of it all behind closed doors, behind other people's backs. The games we play with the intention to hurt will sometimes backfire on ourselves too, and it's almost always never a good thing to be doing something to hit back at the other person, one whom you know you love. But banging it head on also means that it's time to surrender, to submit, but preferably done so in a more civil manner compared to dropping the bombshell and hoping for an expected reaction.

    Perhaps in the madness of it all, it takes an ex-mental patient character John (played by Michael Shannon) to become the voice of reason in an insanely fake world that both Frank and April find themselves in. In being crazy, he's granted the excuse to cut through the nonsense and say things as he sees fit, and has some of the best lines in the movie but also being the most accurate in the reading of the characters' expressions. If you think both Frank and April have words that hurt, pay attention to the wise sayings of John.

    Based on a novel by Richard Yates, Sam Mandes managed to bring out the best in the chemistry between his two leading stars. Between them, age has not been kind to Winslet, while the additional lines on DiCaprio's face makes him all the more mature, though retaining his baby-faced looks that even made it to the insults their character trades.
    Just when everything starts to meander around the themes it set out to explore, and treading in dangerous ground in being too convoluted for its own good, the parting shot was quite verbose in summing everything up quite nicely, in that it pays to switch off at times, or most of the times if you will, in order to keep things as sane as possible without the opportunity of being misread that you're uncooperative, or unwilling to lend a listening ear. Very poignant, emotionally turbulent and chillingly close to reality.

    'Look at us. We're just like everyone else. We've bought into the same, ridiculous delusion.''
  • OnlyNDreams
    July 9, 2009
    OnlyNDreams
    Kate & Leo have such great chemistry on screen, I enjoyed seeing them in another movie together.
  • gor41
    July 2, 2009
    gor41
    Impeccably staged insight into 50's suburbia which looks sumptuous. I think the mad neighbour who speaks the truth was an unnecessary misstep and I would have liked more back story on how their relationship formed and developed.
  • beachpeach
    November 30, 2009
    beachpeach
    One of the most powerful movies i have ever seen. A story that is commentary on our western society (set in the 50s which only makes it more extreme).
    A FANTASTIC FILM! This movie stuck with me longer than any movie has. People either love it or hate it because it hits too close...( read more) to home for people and they don't know what to do with that!
  • louisegrassie
    November 30, 2009
    louisegrassie
    It was well acted, well directed but one of the most unrelentingly grim films I've ever seen.
  • filmguy450
    November 24, 2009
    filmguy450
    It seems that I am the only one to like this movie on here. I thought the first half was a great buildup of just intensity whilst they have some small fights, but then everything explodes and it's fascinating to see these two, whom still have great chemistry together. When Leo's ...( read more)character casually has an affair, when he gets home, he seems to almost regret it. It's interesting to see how they do such things without the other's knowledge. Tightly edited and quite good, the biggest problem is Michael Shannon's performance, not that it was bad, just not as amazing as the critics deemed it.
  • danimoviefreak
    November 22, 2009
    danimoviefreak
    el mejor dialogo que e visto"
  • thisguyoverhere
    November 18, 2009
    thisguyoverhere
    There's no place like home...

    This Guy Over Here picks this as one of the Best Films of the 2000s
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