Wow. I think tour de force performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

I think anyone in a long-term relationship could relate to some of this movie. And anyone who feels trapped in the life he or she leads, in any way, could relate to this movie. There wasn’t a lot of character development in this movie, but the characters were very deep. And this movie was about the cracks that begin to show after a period of time.

So the characters didn’t change much from the actual start of the movie until the end, but the journey they took from the beginning to the end was fairly authentic. Even the snippets of the past were effective. Usually I think more is necessary. You can’t just show me time A and expect me to take it that it’s come to time B. It’s the problem The Break-Up [DVD] faced, though I didn’t think it did that bad a job trying. It just didn’t give me enough of the good stuff to care that the characters broke up. Perhaps because the characters in Revolutionary Road were so deep that I just bought into it more. Or perhaps because you saw the relationship breaking apart, but you also so a few nice times, you saw how it could break apart underneath the veneer of normalcy and perfection.

I’m just glad for a change there wasn’t some sort of crazy turn in the third act. Unlike so many movies I’ve seen lately, the third act wasn’t a betrayal of the first two acts. You’ll likely read a lot about how this might not be a great movie, but the performances are excellent. Or perhaps that there’s no reason to revisit this movie, but I’m not sure about either. I really enjoyed this movie and I think with repeat viewings I’d appreciate more the performances and the story.

For what it’s worth, I enjoyed this movie much more than Slumdog Millionaire or The Wrestler. I’m not saying this movie wasn’t without its fair share of cliche, but the cliches really took me out of the movie in Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler, but not so much in Revolutionary Road. A few things came close, but not too bad, except maybe the very last scene of the movie.

A lot of people don’t enjoy the crazy son’s character. The guys at Slashfilmcast didn’t particularly like the character. Why have a character spell out for the audience what’s on the screen, they asked. I’m not sure. I think it was a matter of a person not in this world being able to see through the facade. The son hadn’t bought into the world like the other characters had. He didn’t have any worth wrapped up in that life. So he could see the smoke and mirrors the others so willingly ignored. The part about him being crazy to allow him to disregard social rules was one of those aforementioned cliches that almost pulled me out of the movie.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable movie.