The Associated Press ON SCREEN: Tom Hanks stars in 'The Road to Perdition.' 'Road to Perdition' is showing at Carmike 10. It is rated R and runs 111 minutes.

Crime boss John Rooney ruefully tells his chief henchman, Michael Sullivan, "None of us can make it to heaven."

"My son can," Sullivan replies.

Sullivan then hits the road to try to save his 12-year-old boy after the kid inadvertently witnesses a mob assassination.

But first, he must try to keep his boy alive. The mob wants him dead.

As superbly played by Tom Hanks, Sullivan is a bad man trying to be a good father.

Offering reminders of both Shakespearean tragedies and the best Warner Brothers gangster films of the '30s, "Road to Perdition" plumbs rich emotional depth in a moody tale of Irish gangsters during the Depression.

The 1930s crime world is a suspenseful backdrop for a study of the complex relationships between fathers and sons.

Crime boss Rooney (Paul Newman) has a weak and ineffectual grown son named Connor (Daniel Craig), who messes up nearly every assignment he gets from his father.

Connor is also jealous of the way the older Rooney favors his chief aide, Sullivan.

The henchman is nearly an adopted son; he has been at Rooney's side since he was an orphan dropped on his doorstep.

But Rooney feels obligated to his blood son. He sides with him in a sudden dispute with Sullivan, even though the choice seems to break the old man's heart.

But the main focus is on Sullivan -- and his efforts to teach his boy to "do as I say, not as I do."

"Road to Perdition" gets top marks in every conceivable category -- the acting, the cinematography, the sets and costumes, and the music.

Hanks brings a weighty resignation to the first substantial dark role of his career; you believe he's capable of murder, at least when he's under orders from an old man he loves.

But you also believe he will do anything to save his son and point him in the right direction.

Newman is also fabulous in a smaller but important role as the powerful, complex Rooney. The crime patriarch oozes the charm of a colorful and generous grandfather but can turn on a dime and order your death.

The supporting performers also are stunners -- especially newcomer Tyler Hoechlin as Sullivan's boy, Jude Law as a squirrelly degenerate hired to hunt down Sullivan, and Stanley Tucci as the suave but deadly Chicago gangster Frank Nitti (the only real-life figure in the saga).

The script by David Self is based on Max Allan Collins' graphic novel, and offers much more emotional resonance than you might expect from an adaptation of a so-called adult comic book.

Mendes gives the film a darkly poetic style.

He and the great veteran cinematographer Conrad L. Hall have created memorable images of heightened reality amid the shadows, rain and snow of winter in the Illinois of the 1930s.

Composer Thomas Newman, whose score seems to combine the spooky intensity and rhythmic pulse of Bernard Herrmann with the lovely lyricism of Elmer Bernstein, provides the film's final layer of artistry.

The summer of 2002 may be remembered for the inordinate amount of intelligence and artistry that hit the screen in what is normally the dumbed-down movie season -- such films as "The Bourne Identity," "Minority Report," "Insomnia," and the forthcoming "K-19: The Widowmaker."

But the best of the lot -- by a mile -- is "Road to Perdition."