Bitter, nerve-wracking, and relentless, "Revolutionary Road" is a moment-to-moment autopsy of a marriage on the rocks and an indictment of the American Dream gone sour. It is a mesmerizing look at desperate lives, wrong moves and spoiled dreams that hits hard right from the beginning and never lets up.

Directed by Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") and faithfully adapted by Justin Haythe from the novel by Richard Yates, the film reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, showcasing the maturity each has taken on over the past decade. Winslet in particular has become an actress of such depth she can send shivers up the spine, and she does so here with heartbreaking consistency.

In the gray-flannel suit world of 1955 Connecticut, DiCaprio is Frank Wheeler, a World War II vet who thinks, vaguely, he should be doing something exceptional -- but instead merely takes the 8:14 from Darien every morning, to work in a frosted glass cubicle at an office-machine company. He’s begun to hide his discontent behind extra martinis, and girls from the secretarial pool, and a slight, smug superiority.

Winslet is his wife April, who once had dreams of acting -- but now she simply stays at home with their children, bringing out dinner in her starched apron.

On his birthday, April presents Frank with a plan: sell their cozy house on Revolutionary Road and move to Paris. There, after leaving behind the "hopeless emptiness" of their current life, they can begin anew. April can work while Frank takes some time for self-discovery. 

He is initially enthused by the idea, but reality begins to intrude on the fantasy. Frank is offered a major promotion, and with it comes more money and more responsibility, and April learns that she is pregnant with the couple’s third child. Suddenly, Paris seems like a fairy tale and the union that had been buoyed by a spark of elusive hope, crashes and burns.

We see Frank and April at their best and their worst. There are times when we catch glimpses of the people they were before routine, repression, and the need to conform ground them down. Do they love each other and their children, or are they going through the motions, trying to present themselves as the perfect family to their "friends" and neighbors? Is the decision to move to Paris ever a real plan or is it a perfect fantasy that keeps them afloat until it is no longer possible to face it as more than something distant and ephemeral? One character remarks that Europe will always be there but, for Frank and April, it has become as far away as the moon.

"Revolutionary Road" is dramatically potent material and, although it poses a number of philosophical questions, it works best as an unsentimental examination of a marriage in crisis. Because the actors are expert, Mendes understands the subject matter, and the source material is so meticulous, we are left emotionally impacted but without a sense of having been manipulated. It rewards in the ways that only tragedies can.

Nominated for three Academy Awards, including explosive Best Supporting Actor nominee Michael Shannon, "Revolutionary Road" is a sad, grim movie that asks pointed questions about the compromises we make and the lies we tell in an effort to maintain a sense of equilibrium. It is rated R and has a running time of 119 minutes.