Like her as an actress or not, Kristen Stewart deserves at least a little bit of credit for taking roles in some interesting independent films following her big “Twilight” breakthrough – films that include jailbait rock-band biopic “The Runaways”, Sundance drama “Welcome to the Rileys” opposite James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo, and now “On the Road”, the Walter Salles-directed adaptation of the classic novel by Beat Generation icon Jack Kerouac.
The novel, largely an autobiographical work, centers on two free-spirited young men – narrator Sal Paradise (a stand-in for Kerouac) and his friend Dean Moriarty – who embark on a series of wild and woolly road trips through the U.S.
In the film, Sal (the book’s narrator) is played by Sam Riley (the British actor who portrayed late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in “Control”) and Dean is played by “Tron: Legacy” heartthrob Garrett Hedlund. Stewart, meanwhile, plays Marylou, Dean’s first wife who accompanies the two friends on several of their escapades. Amy Adams, Viggo Mortenson, Kirsten Dunst, Steve Buscemi, Terrence Howard and Elisabeth Moss also star (albeit most of them only briefly).
Though the film has no set release date in the U.S. as of yet, distributor Focus today released the first poster for the film, along with several images depicting Riley, Hedlund and Stewart’s characters as they burn their way through mid-20th century America.
The poster itself is fine, I suppose, though it feels pretty uninspired given the source material and more or less screams “generic road movie”. As such, I’m going to award it a perfectly average “C” grade – a totally appropriate rating for such a good-looking but banal piece of work.
You can check out the poster and all six images below. Once you’re done, be sure and grade the former for yourself at top left!