Most fathers probably look forward to the first time their son asks them what they do for a living. If the answer was 'I kill people', they might look at it differently. Not only does Michael Sullivan have to face this predicament, but he soon finds that his son's life is in danger as well as his own. With American Beauty, English director Sam Mendes demonstrated that comedies can have a heart and a brain. Here, he shows us that thrillers can have the same. You may have already guessed a lot of what happens through the movie, but that doesn't matter. We were told what was going to happen at the start of American Beauty, but that didn't diminish our sense of wonder. Road To Perdition makes no attempt to constantly fool its audience with contrivance upon contrivance. What's important is not what happens, but why it happens, how the characters react and how their reactions affect what happens next. I just wish more movies had their priorities sorted similarly.