ROAD TO PERDITION Directed by Sam Mendes A DreamWorks release Opens Friday at area theaters

“I’m something of a rarity. I shoot the dead.” Maguire (Jude Law) is only partly right. A freelance photographer scrounging for work during the Depression, he specializes in images of corpses, and, rather ingeniously, secures his employment by murdering his own subjects. But in Road to Perdition, Maguire is only one of several professional killers, men who repeatedly loom in low-angle shots, pursuing their victims relentlessly in sinister shadows and driving rain, all the while trying to figure out their familial relations. Maguire’s most distinguishing feature is his lack of a traumatizing father-son relationship. That, and his ratty hair.

By contrast, Maguire's latest assignment, Irish mob hit man Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks), has plenty of trauma and plenty of hair. The anti-heroic protagonist of Sam Mendes' latest dysfunctional family saga, Sullivan initially appears possessed of a pleasantly upper-middle-class existence, ensconced in a large house with his quietly supportive (and quickly dispatched) wife, Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and two young sons, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin) and Peter (Liam Aiken). Sullivan is introduced by way of Michael Jr.'s perspective; sent to fetch dad for dinner, he pauses in the hallway outside his parents' bedroom, watching his father carefully remove his jacket and gun.

The shot, a long one through the narrow doorway, makes clear Michael's complex mix of fear and love for his father. It's one of many ominous images in the film inspired by its source, Max Allan Collins' 1998 graphic novel, a suitably gloomy evocation of murder as industry. Though Michael knows enough not to ask what his father does for a living -- namely, kill people for Chicago boss John Rooney (Paul Newman) -- he's also curious enough to check it out for himself. The trauma begins one stormy night, when Michael stows away in the back of the car and, peering from under a door, inadvertently sees his dad shoot several men with his Tommy gun. Worse, he also witnesses a murder by Rooney's obviously troubled blood-son Connor (Daniel Craig), who has long regarded Sullivan as a rival for his father's affection and trust.

Though Sullivan assures his employers that Michael "understands" and business can continue as usual, it's immediately clear (what with all the crashing thunder and driving rain on the night of the murder) that whatever familial equilibrium they all pretend to share is destroyed. This despite Rooney's clear preference of the loyal, efficient and appropriately mournful Sullivan to the whiny, inept, conveniently villainous Connor. Sullivan and Michael go on the run, and the film's father-son romance begins in earnest.

Michael's voiceover structures David Self's script, so you know from the beginning that the six weeks on the road with dad during the winter of 1931 will be life-changing, and that he will come to admire the man he has, until then, barely known. Emulating the Lone Ranger stories Michael loves to read under his blanket with a flashlight, their adventure entails a series of lessons: His father teaches him to shoot, to drive, to keep watch. They embark on a series of Midwestern bank robberies, as Sullivan seeks to hit the Chicago mob where it hurts, conveyed in a nifty montage that looks like a graphic novel in motion, the camera panning over robbery scenes-like-panels, as the pair rack up the loot.

The film's manifest reverence for its source, its artful darkness (repeated shots of rainy nights, bodies rising and falling in silhouette) and precise composition (a scene toward the end, where a brightly lit beach house becomes a backdrop for blood, everywhere), are stunning, and almost make up for the tired plot (Eastwood and Costner's A Perfect World comes to mind), in which a boy sees his father (figure) redeemed by good intentions, if not acts, exactly. Michael's becoming-a-man story is, finally, less classic than contrived; he doesn't witness most of his dad's shadowy brutality, and when you see it, the thugs and gangsters are so easily identifiable as such that the moral dilemma that's supposed to emerge never does. Instead, you see Tom Hanks shooting the bad guys.

Perhaps appropriately, Road to Perdition's most complicated, unsympathetic character -- at least in terms of your relationship to him -- is the scuzzy hit-man-photographer Maguire. For him, killing is an art, and his attention to detail aligns him -- creepily, if you think about it -- with the film's own meticulous aesthetic. Introduced as he's photographing a not-quite-dead subject, Maguire looks annoyed that he has to finish the job to get his shot and smothers the guy, who's already bloody with a knife to his chest.

Maguire takes pride in it. His first encounter with Sullivan has them conversing across separate diner booths, mirroring one another in their dark topcoats and hats (Sullivan's is a standard fedora; Maguire's a natty bowler). Not yet aware that Maguire is hired to kill him, Sullivan asks about his camera, which Maguire is deftly loading with film: "Is that your profession or your pleasure?" Maguire smiles, winds his film ferociously, then clunks the instrument on the table before him: "Both I guess. To be paid to do what you love, ain't that the dream?" Refreshingly, Maguire has few delusions.