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snurriI wasn't expecting all that much from Revolutionary Road, frankly. Watching the trailer I felt like I knew exactly what the movie was going to be, thematically, and mostly that was the case. You know what I mean; it's a film about The Sacrifices We Make, for stability, for love, for children. There's also a bit of We Were Supposed to Be Different in there, and a dollop of Work Without Passion Will Kill Your Soul. We can argue about how valid any of those themes are, but the primary problem is that they are very, very familiar themes, one might almost say worn out. Note that I'm talking about the film, here, and not the novel by Richard Yates, which I have not read. I am perfectly willing to believe that the source material was deeper and more subtle. There are hints of this in DiCaprio and Winslet's performances, that really their disillusionment is not with the world but with themselves. This is the We Were Supposed to Be Different theme, the more interesting of the above, but the film itself is coy about confronting it, mostly leaving it up to the leads to bring it forth. Which they are perfectly able to do--Kate and Leo are both at full strength in this picture, spinning apart in spectacular fashion--but they are forced to do so by transcending the material, which means somewhere along the line someone fell down on the job. Scenes with Michael Shannon as the institutionalized son of the couple's realtor provide welcome relief from the melodrama, as he bears vocal witness to their last-ditch attempt at escape and its inevitable unraveling. His scenes are the only part of the film that doesn't feel at least a bit rote; every other step of the fall is telegraphed, making the film feel far longer than its two-hour running time, and not in a good way.