Revolutionary Road is a high-powered, high-profile film with a first-rate cast headed by superstars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, directed by Sam Mendes, the prestigious British stage director, who is also Ms. Winslet's husband; yet the only major Academy Award nomination the film received was for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. While that performance by Michael Shannon as a disturbed man on furlough from a mental institution was admirable, it was a sharp detour from the through line of the story.
The central action of the film is the deteriorating marriage of the Wheelers, a 1950s suburban couple, played by DiCaprio and Winslet; and the unfolding events of what is clearly an inevitable train wreck. Along the way, the story is punctuated with ancillary characters--co-workers, friends, and neighbors--each of whom accelerates the downhill plunge. One of them, played superbly by Kathy Bates, is a chirpy real estate agent and neighbor, who prattles endlessly. At first, her inanities seem harmless, but later on in the film, she brings her troubled son, played by Shannon, to visit the Wheelers. It is immediately apparent that the trouble with the son is his mother.
Shannon has only two scenes, and he plays both of them at peak intensity. Granted, he is portraying a disturbed person, but a basic axiom of drama, in performance, in directing, and in writing, is to start low so that there is room to build. As a result of Shannon's high intensity performance, he delivers his final vicious exit line--which propels the story to its tragic end--at the same elevated level as all his other lines. If instead, Shannon had played his scenes with tense but muted restraint (in contrast to his mother's blather) that final line would have had even more powerful impact.
I did not read the original novel by Richard Yates, so this reaction is purely to the film, but director Sam Mendes or screenwriter Justin Haythe would have been better off to have orchestrated a crescendo rather than a cyclone from their Oscar nominee.