A tough and determined man (superbly played with fierce resolve and conviction by Viggo Mortensen) and his frightened young son (a fine portrayal by Kodi Smit-McPhee) embark on a perilous journey across a barren and dangerous wasteland as they attempt to find safety in a bleak and hostile post-apocalyptic world. The pair encounter numerous obstacles such as deadly cannibals and roving hordes of scavengers on their pilgrimage.

Director John Hillcoat vividly captures a potently brooding atmosphere of pervasive dread, despair, and utter hopelessness. Joe Penhall's stark and intelligent script smartly addresses the basic human need to survive and persevere without compromising one's morals or losing one's humanity in the process, with the strong bond of love between the father and his son providing a tremendous amount of gut-wrenching poignancy. The ace acting by the top-drawer cast keeps this movie on track: Charlize Theron as the father's bitter and defeated wife, Guy Pearce as a kindly veteran, Michael Kenneth Williams as a desperate thief, Garrett Dillahunt as a creepy gang member, and, in an especially bravura turn, Robert Duvall as a weary and rundown old man. Javier Aguirresarobe's gloomy widescreen cinematography gives this picture an appropriately grayish look and offers a wealth of striking shots of a desolate landscape rife with decaying trees, crumbling buildings, and rusty abandoned cars. The moody and melancholy score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis further enhances the overall dreary tone. An absolute powerhouse.

I did read the novel and I did get the same sense from the film. I wondered why this was chosen to be made into a film (probably in the aftermath of "No Country for Old Men"). What we have here is our future. At some point it will look like this with the human species hoping to grasp that last straw as they sink in the mire. The acting is excellent, but everything is so hopeless. There's hunger, disease, infection, despair, and all that good stuff. There are two people we like and we relish each positive moment. A shower, a can of peaches, a kind word, whatever is enough to raise the spirits. At some point we will find a way to do this to ourselves or some fanatic will do it for us. I remember watching "The Day After" some twenty-five years or so ago. It left me with a hopefulness. As we ignore the forces in the world and they slip past the point of no return, I think Cormac McCarthy probably has seen a vision. I hope I'm wrong. When we lose compassion for our fellow human beings and judge them in our short sighted, petty ways, we get the future we've asked for.

I'm a huge fan of the post-apocalypse genre so when I heard about this film I looked forward to seeing it. Now that I've done so, I'm left both impressed and disappointed. Impressed by the quality of film-making and acting on display, which is uniformly excellent; disappointed by the predictable nature of the story, which adds absolutely nothing new to an age-old genre, following staples set up by the likes of LAST MAN ON EARTH. Perhaps the fault lies with the novel, which I haven't read.

Director John Hillcoat was previously responsible for THE PROPOSITION, an Australian western I thought was pretty much fantastic. He's adept at filling his movies with moods and atmosphere, and this film is no exception: there's an altogether downbeat approach here, a gritty, no-hope situation for every character on the screen. This makes it a rather depressing watch. The backdrop of a devastated world – we never learn what caused the apocalypse – is expertly realised and never less than convincing.

The acting keeps you watching. The central thrust is the relationship between father Mortensen and child Smit-McPhee; the latter is very good in a breakout role, but it's Mortensen who gives the best performance in the film, as always, living and breathing a role which I feel few others could have adopted quite as thoroughly. There isn't much time for the other actors like the briefly seen Pearce and Theron, but I did enjoy Duvall's turn as a crusty, ancient traveller.

The plot throws in the usual staples – cannibals, gangs of marauding truckers, underground bunkers, shoot-outs – and the action scenes are very well handled and packed with tension. Some moments, like when the twosome meet a thief- transcend the source material and become something altogether better. In the end, though, this is very much a B-movie picture dressed up with budget and talent to appear like a Hollywood blockbuster.