I saw the Road tonight. If anyone still has any doubts about it, put them away. Hillcoat and co have done a magnificent job and have produced probably the best adaptation it would be possible for anyone to make. I can confirm that none of the newreel nonsense from the trailer at the beginning of this thread appears in the film, and that - again, despite that awful, abject trailer - the tone of the film is about as far from a Hollywood action blockbuster as it's possible to imagine. It's true that Charlize Theron is in the film marginally more than her character appears in the book, but none of her scenes have even the slightest whiff of "Quick! We need eye candy!" about them, and the brief and mostly wordless scenes with her that have been added for the movie are all effective and I would argue essential to making the film what it is.
What the film is, more so than the book, is a story about the love between the man and his son. In fact in a way the film is a mirror-image of the book: while the book was a story of horror and despair with a strong subtext of love and hope, the film is really a story of love and hope with a strong subtext of horror and despair. For this reason it doesn't really matter that arguably the two most horrific scenes in the book - the melted road and the dead baby - are missing from the film, because while the film is frequently harrowing it is nonetheless overwhelmingly about the relationship between the father and the son. In fact, I think a direct effect of verbalising the almost subliminal dialogue of the book - something we were worrying about earlier in this thread - is to bring the emotions to the forefront. That these emotions and the strong and pervading sense of love never even approach sentimentality is a credit to both Viggo Mortensen as the father and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the son. Mortensen must certainly earn a slew of awards nominations for his performance, but Smit-McPhee is no less deserving of acclaim.
So in short, it's a magnificent film. A stunner, literally: I don't think I've ever been in a more silent cinema (except for those many times when I've been the only person in the cinema, but let's not go into that). Please go and see it if you have any interest in quality cinema.