Review: On The Road

Six decades have passed since Jack Kerouac’s On the Road became a counter-cultural landmark, during which time they have been numerous fruitless attempts to turn it into a film. That Walter Salles has succeeded where so many have failed is something to be celebrated, even if the result shows up all too well why others stumbled.

More a collection of episodes than a sustained narrative, Kerouac’s seminal 1951 text mirrors the rootless lives of its freedom-seeking protagonists in a way that flies in the face of conventional cinematic storytelling. Best buckle up and surrender yourself to the ride, then, if you want to experience the same hedonistic highs its characters chase after over the course of a lengthy and at times wearisome movie.

There’s plenty to admire here, from Kristen Stewart’s intoxicating wild child to Viggo Mortensen’s mellifluous junkie, a figure transparently inspired by Naked Lunch author William S Burroughs. Yet while Garrett Hedlund brings the confident swagger of the young Brad Pitt to his personification of Dean Moriarty, aka Neal Cassady, Kerouac’s own alter-ego is so wanly embodied by Britain’s Sam Riley you have to wonder if his superb portrayal of Ian Curtis in Control was a flukish one-off.