6) Road To Perdition
This is another movie like A History of Violence where most people aren’t even aware that it originated as a comic book.
Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition features no caped crusaders, no mutants with superpowers and no dastardly villains threatening a hero’s damsel. Instead, it has the American-as-apple-pie Tom Hanks playing a Prohibition-era Irish-American gangster who slaughters all those who get in his way. Sounds pretty good, right?
Tougher and thematically richer than the typical comic book movie, Road to Perdition takes a revenge narrative (Hanks’ mobster Michael Sullivan and his surviving son go on the road to rob banks and kill those responsible for the murder of Michael’s wife and youngest child) and adds Catholic guilt and troubling familial legacy.
That being said, the film’s most comic book-y moment – Michael Tommy guns his enemies down in the middle of a rain-soaked street – still happens to be one of its most beautiful.