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Revolutionary Road is a tragic realistic love story powered by the believable performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet who reunite 12 years later after starring in 1997's Titanic together. They still have that great chemistry together as before and the story of the movie is not a happy one but its pretty realistic look of a marriage slowly deteriorating. Leonardo DiCaprio is good as always as Frank Wheeler and Kate Winslet is just as impressive playing his wife April who seem to have to be the perfect family with the house, the kids, and a good paycheck living in a Connecticut suburb in the 1950's. But appearances aren't always what they appear to be in this film directed by Sam Mendes. The man behind films like Road To Perdition, American Beauty, and Jardhead. He's also the husband of Kate Winslet. Mendes does another admirable job of bringing this tragic love story of the Wheelers to the big screen. DiCaprio and Winslet are fantastic portraying two people who do love each other but can't seem to make their marriage work. Dicaprio and Winslet disappear into their roles becoming those characters making you care about them and hoping they succeed. They both continue to show their amazing talent in this film. Kathy Bates turns in a decent performance as well but her character isn't it that much. She shows up for brief appearances here and there because the main focus is on Leo and Kate. Michael Shannon is the only one to standout in the rest of the supporting cast who do a good in their roles as well. Shannon plays John Givings a troubled man who says whats on his mind without thinking twice about it and is the only one who can see right through the Wheelers. Shannon may not get a lot of screen time but he does a great job in the small role he has in the movie. He's also the son of the character played by Bates. The scenes where DiCaprio and Winslet lash out at each other are done well you can feel the tension between them growing with each passing moment as their arguments escalate. The period setting fits with the tone of the film and everything in it looked realistic giving audiences a look at what things were like back then. There are two sex scenes both involving Winslet so parents should be warned but none of them are too explicit like Monster's Ball, Original Sin, or Little Children to name a few. The pacing for the movie was a little slow at times but the good more than outweighs the bad in Revolutionary Road. The movie doesn't have your typical Hollywood ending but thats one of things I liked it about because life doesn't always have a happy ending. Overall Revolutionary Road was better than expected it's a tragic love story brought to life because of the exceptional performances from both Dicaprio and Winslet who make the film worth the time to watch.

Having been a 50s housewife with children at home and a husband who wanted to be anywhere but there, this movie was familiar territory. How many of us in those years simply packed our dreams away for the immediate necessity of putting food on the table and paying the mortgage? Di Caprio is outstanding, as is Winslet, she having to deal with an American accent along with the tearing emotions. I didn't see that anyone picked up on the final scene, of Kathy Bates and her husband, but to me that was the whole moral of the story - here is where you will end up if you give in to what you know is not right for you. Overall, though, well done - except women in the 50s did NOT wear hats to work!!

I saw an advance screening of Revolutionary Road in Beverly Hills, CA this evening (December 14th). A Q&A session followed the screening with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn, and screenwriter Justin Haythe. Photos from the Q&A are attached to this report.

Revolutionary Road is a story that you won't be able to shake easily. The film will stick in your head and leave you to contemplate what has just happened on the screen before you. Richard Yates gives us the story of Frank and April Wheeler, the seemingly perfect suburbia couple. We soon find out their marriage is teetering on the edge of a collapse as they are overwhelmed by the fact that they have each made the wrong choices in their lives.

Once again Kate Winselt and Leonardo DiCaprio come together with great chemistry, pulling the best out of each other. This is a heavy film with emotionally complex characters, I'm not sure I could think of any two actors that could pull off the roles of Frank and April Wheeler like Leonardo and Kate did.

"Truth is usually in singular - Lies always come in plural." I'm not sure who said that, but it is a notion that sums up this film.

Michael Shannon shinned in his role as the clinically insane son of Kathy Bates character; John Givings. Bates and Shannon both deliver humorous scenes to this heavy storyline, although there are times when you see the sadness and desperation in their characters as well. Michael Shannon's character, John Givings, is the truth in this film. Although clinically insane, he can see through everyone's lies and does the unthinkable; he forces everyone face their own truth.

I guarantee you will not be singing "My Heart Will Go On" after seeing this film. But you won't be disappointed with this little film gem.

Revolutionary Road is not a very joyful film, or is it easy to watch. Instead of being simply entertaining, it achieves what not many films these days do. It wants to be a learning lesson.

This film is superbly crafted, in both the writing and the amazing direction by Sam Mendes. After his great film 'American Beauty', he comes back with strong will to do this project. His direction is the best of the year for sure. It feels so professional, so alive. The writing, both of the characters, Frank and April Wheeler, I feel they are so open and 3-dimensional characters, but the screenplay wants to let us inside their lives, and it does so with great passion. Leonardo Dicaprio plays Frank with such intensity, with such force. Dicaprio gives his best performance here without a doubt, since I don't really think he has ever done something like this before. Then there is Kate Winslet. My favorite actress, and certainly one of the most talented out there. Winslet has surprised me before in a lot of movies, but here, she surprises me in a whole other way. Her silent, unlikeable, and sometimes human and cold portrayal of April Wheeler is one of the best performances of the decade. She gives the best female performance of the year, and I truly hope she finally wins the Oscar she deserves.

The film itself is so beautiful, so alive, yet at the same time, so dark to what the film is about. The cinematography is amazing, as well as the costumes and the whole set designs. The music, the original score, was so unsettling, perfectly balanced to what each scene brought.

Revolutionary Road is not a film for everyone. I can definitely see some critics will hate it, but it should certainly be respected, for its ambition, for the things it accomplishes and every thing it portrays. I think this is Mendes' masterpiece. I have not seen a better made film this year.

I went to see this at an advanced screener in Leicester Square last night. Kate Winslett chatted about the film on stage afterward. I went as one of those people who'd read the book and consider that source material to be amongst the best literature I'd ever read. I was wondering if and how the film could match up. My prior concerns were about how accurate the film would be. Well, there's nothing to worry about there. Mendes has created a near carbon copy of the book, the locations, characters and scenes are all exactly as I 'saw' them on the page. Nothing (as far as I could tell) is portrayed out of order, no extra characters are introduced, and no primary characters are dropped or altered. The acting is 100% perfect. The mies-en-scene is perfect. Absolutely nothing could or should have been done differently. So why not 10/10? The problem lies in the fact that Yates' novel is a literary one, much of the essence of the experience of the story is realized by Yates with just the right turn of phrase or choice of word. How does a director set about depicting or capturing this visually? I don't think he really can, he needs to use cinematic tricks and devices to inject resonance, the same resonance Yates achieves with that turn of phrase. But in being so (probably rightly) concerned about being true to the source material, the film somehow comes up a little flat as a film going experience, a sort of American Beauty without the crucial stylistic bells and whistles. Kate Winslett said afterward that (interestingly) it was she who had brought the book and the project to her husband, not vice versa and that it took some consideration for Sam Mendes to convince himself that he hadn't already told this story before, and by the final credits, I too was thinking just that, it felt like I'd watched a prequel to American Beauty, but without the pizazz and the rapture and the delight. So, the book, 10/10, the film, 8/10.