Although Hollywood often treats spectacular destruction as entertainment, this adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy is soberingly serious. In an ashen post-apocalyptic landscape, a man and his son make a perilous journey across America searching for better prospects. After the breakdown of society, what's left except to scavenge the remaining food then turn to human prey? And what price morality when basic survival's at stake? Director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) takes on these weighty philosophical questions, and creates a convincingly desolate fresco of modern life at the end of its tether. Viggo Mortensen might be just a bit too rugged as the careworn dad, but Kodi Smit-McPhee's performance as the vulnerable boy is deeply touching, without a hint of child-actor precocity. The multiple threats faced by the father and son ensure there's constant tension, even though the plot's a fairly skeletal affair. Ultimately, this bracingly austere film falls a little short of the greatness of the book, but it's still a terrifyingly effective warning that we squander the planet's resources at our peril.