The Road (2009)

Nice, but where's the trigger?

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The Road (2009)

Based on a 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy, The Road is a post-apocalyptic film showing the travails of a father-and-son pair (both of whom are unnamed in the film) after an unspecified cataclysm cripples the Earth's ability to sustain life. With humanity's cradle slowly becoming its coffin, the Father (Viggo Mortensen) must take his Son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) from the only home he's ever known to try and find safe haven that may no longer exist, all the while maintaining some semblance of morality amidst a world sinking to ever deeper depths in the struggle to survive.

The following weapons were used in the film The Road:

Smith & Wesson Model 10

A Smith & Wesson Model 10 is the handgun used by the Father (Viggo Mortensen) and the Son among the decayed and dying landscapes they make their journey through. Only two cartridges remain in the gun's cylinder, reserved for the two to commit suicide should they be cornered by cannibals. It is a prominent motif throughout the film, and The Father fires it only once, against a cannibal attempting to take his son hostage. It is also seen in a flashback sequence where the Mother (Charlize Theron) contemplates the revolver and its last two cartridges (implied to be the last of the family's ammunition supply) as a sign that their years-long survival in the home she shared with the Father and Son (who was born shortly after the apocalypse) is doomed to fail, eventually driving her to suicide (though not with the gun).

In the novel, this weapon is a small nickel-plated revolver, the caliber and make of which are never elaborated upon. It too has only two cartridges left.

Smith & Wesson Model 10 Revolver - .38 Special

The Father: Two left. One for you and one for me.

The Father: You point up, then just pull the trigger.
In a chilling scene, The Father demonstrates to his son how to quickly commit suicide with the pistol.

The Father rescues his son from a cannibal who tried to take him at knifepoint.

The Father grudgingly ejects the spent round he used on the roadside cannibal, showing the last left in the gun.

Rather than let his son be eaten by cannibals in a house the two of them tried to take shelter in, The Father prepares to do the unthinkable as he hears the cannibals approach his hiding place.

An old man (Robert Duvall) who claims to be nearly blind shares a meal with the Father and Son, but it's implied he still knows full well what's on the red plate.

The Father: We're going to leave you just the way you left us.
The Father forces a thief (Michael K. Williams) to strip naked at gunpoint, after he stole the cart of supplies belonging to the two. The Son later convinces the Father to leave the Thief's clothes and some extra food behind for him.