Critics are preparing moviegoers for a rough time ahead of them if they decide to take in Road to Perdition, the highly anticipated film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman and directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty). Given early raves for the film, today's mixed reviews may come as a surprise and disappointment for DreamWorks, the studio releasing it. Acknowledging that it may wind up receiving multiple Oscars, Lou Lumenick in the New York Post comments nevertheless that the movie "is too often a gloomy, self-conscious exercise in style for style's sake that wears its aspirations and the reputations of its Oscar-winning team ... like a shroud." Likewise, Carrie Rickey concludes in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "One wishes that [Mendes's] film had as much heart as it does art." Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe remarks that the film's "seriousness is welcome. It's also a burden the film can't completely surmount." To be sure, most reviewers heap high praise on the film. Some, in fact, turn the negative comments on their head. Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune calls it "a rare recent example of a big-budget Hollywood studio movie made with self-conscious artistry and ambition." Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes: "Road to Perdition, a few stumbles aside, is all there. The lighting, the score, the costumes, everything. You can almost see Mendes and company getting together before a single frame had been shot and collectively vowing, "This is going to be something really good." And it is." Stephen Holden in the New York Times calls it "a period gangster film that achieves the grandeur of a classic Hollywood western." Writes Robert W. Butler in the Kansas City Star: "Superbly photographed and staged by Mendes with a series of riveting set pieces the likes of which mainstream audiences have rarely seen, this film creates its own world, its own style, its own detached-but-compelling ambience." And Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times concludes his review this way: "This is a story with a will to move us and the ability to do whatever it takes to make that happen." Several reviewers seem to suggest that they just don't know what to make of the film, not the least of whom is the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, who writes: "After I saw Road to Perdition, I knew I admired it, but I didn't know if I liked it. I am still not sure."