***The Road To…., The Corner Boys Of The 1930s

DVD Review

The Road To Perdition, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Dreamworks, 2002

I have spent a lot of time in this space writing about my corner boy experiences growing up in my old Irish and Italian ethnic mix (or not mix as occurred quite often when it was time to see who was king of the hill, who had what, who had cojones) working-class neighborhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s in a town, North Adamsville just outside Boston. I have also spent some time writing about the corner boys who just immediately preceded us in the early 1950s, our role models and advisors in the ways of the streets who learned what they knew from their corner boy forebears and so on back to Adam and Eve, maybe before, actually now that I think about it, definitely before. Pretty tame really, mainly hanging off the walls of some storefront, dreaming although we would not have dignified our thought by such an elegant term. Unless of course you were on the receiving end of a vicious beating, reason given or not, got your money stolen in some back alley ambush (got jack-rolled in the inelegant term of the time), or had your personal household possessions ransacked or stolen by some midnight shifter looking to find esy street the easy way your perspective might not be so romantic. The “corner boys,” Irish and Italian mainly, of 1930s Great Depression Chicago though, as portrayed in the film under review, The Road to Perdition, make all that other stuff seem “punk” by comparison.

Of course the motives to join a gang of lumpenproletarians in all cases were the same then, and today. That is “where the money was” to paraphrase the old-time famous bank robber, Willy Sutton. No question all those guys in the 1930s and later were (and are) from hunger, from hunger meaning they had big wanting habits at all times and under all conditions. But they were also looking for the quick dollar and the “no heavy lifting” life not associated with steady working- class factory every day values. Equally true is the fact that there are always more “hungry” guys looking ot cash in on easy street than the market can bear which leads to two things-external “turf wars” between gangs and internal turf wars over who controls what within gangs. And that is the heart of this story.

The problem for Tom Hanks, a trusted, very trusted, enforcer (read: “hit man”) for Irish mob boss Paul Newman (he of many such corner boy roles going back to Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler and before) is that Newman's psychotic son wants his share of the goodies as befits a son and heir apparent. Needless to say that things get dicey, very dicey as they maneuver to the top, including the gangland-style execution of Hanks’ family that was suppose to include a son, the narrator of the film, who is forced to help Hanks’ seek the inevitable revenge required by the situation. In the end though Tom Waits is right in the opening line from Jersey Girl- “Ain’t got no time for the corner boys, down in the streets making all that noise.” A nice cinematically-pleasing 1930s period piece and what turned out to be a great farewell performance by the late Paul Newman.