"Revolutionary Road" aims to be a soul-splitting film about the miserable marriage of a couple (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) in 1950s suburban America. He's a salesman who longs for a new, exciting career, but still enjoys screwing the office girls during lunch breaks. She's the wife/mother trapped at home and longing for her sacrificed acting career and a life in exciting Paris. They have two children, and an unplanned third pregnancy instigates a long-brewing fight.
It's a good film for the most part, with director Sam Mendes serving up a beautiful recreation of an America that shimmered on the outside but reeked from within. The film nails the plight of most women in pre-1960s America: When they got married, they gave up living and only existed to serve. Men had choice in their married life with a career. It might not be perfect, but it still was a choice.
The film falls apart with its display of domestic warfare. As Winslet and DiCaprio tear each other apart emotionally and physically, for hours at a time, even during an entire day and night, the children are never around. It's explained the tykes are at a party or the babysitter's ... and it reads false at every turn.
If Mendes, screenwriter Justin Haythe and our two leads wanted to really serve a harrowing tale of a hellish family life, then they needed those children to witness every mental-torture fight of this marriage. It's a huge contrived hole meant to win or give the leads sympathy, and anyone who grew up watching his parents consistently go at it can smell this falsehood a mile away. The film rattles the brain, but it draws no blood. It should cut deep, not slight. B-
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