Revolutionary Road

If you are afraid of getting married, or find yourself in a bad marriage, this is not the movie for you. It could send you into a life of celibacy and solitude as Winslet and DiCaprio go at each other with the ferocity of Hulk Hogan attacking Macho Man Savage (and every one of the people mentioned might be willing to hit the other with a chair).

Set in 1955, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet) are a couple of New York hipsters who fall madly in love, but, when they get married and try to live the life they think they are supposed to desire, it leads to pain and heartache.

At heart, April is an actress, but she stays at home to cook, clean and raise the kids. Frank doesn’t know what he is, but each day he rises, becomes the man with the gray flannel suit, and takes the train to his hated job and tiny cubicle. When April finally can’t take it anymore, she proposes a plan to break free from the shackles of suburbia by moving the family to Paris (I hope this boat trip across the Atlantic goes better than their last one).

Will they make it?

Can they break free of the bonds of societal expectations?

Do they have the guts to leave it all behind?

Is their life (that's a nice house they live in) all that bad?

Revolutionary Road has a very simple plot, but great acting that makes the audience almost too uncomfortable to watch the battles raging on the screen (and I mean that in a good way).

Director Sam Mendes and writer Justin Haythe (based on the novel by Richard Yates) focus the movie on each character’s reaction to the plan in an effort to make Revolutionary Road into a sort of referendum on 1950’s society and social mores (a tired theme best lampooned by Kyle Smith, but most of these scenes fall short of providing any serious drama or interesting discussion.

Only Michael Shannon as the outspoken and possibly mentally ill guest provides any exciting or entertaining commentary as he refuses to obey any boundaries of civil behavior and polite conversation. Shannon is equally hilarious and shocking as he lets loose with his opinions with the same kind of tact your crazy great uncle would at Christmas dinner. Like Shannon, our two stars are equally memorable.

DiCaprio and Winslet engage in bitter arguments full of vitriol that that could only be topped by your divorced parents. DiCaprio is wonderful displaying the kind of rage and anger none of us expect from him (even if we have seen it in a few movies), while Winslet delivers a performance that matches that rage, but exceeds DiCpario by also showing the pain, anguish and loss April feels each day.

Revolutionary Road is for those of you who think Marley & Me looks like a sappy, falsely cute, sugary sweet concoction of junk.

Revolutionary Road is rated R for language and some sexual content/nudity.