PICKS & PANS

This week's reviews: 'Perdition,' 'Monk,' more

"Road to Perdition" is a hauntingly lyrical mobster film.

(PEOPLE) -- This week, PEOPLE.COM looks at the film "Road to Perdition," SHeDAISY album "Knock on the Sky" and "Monk" on USA.

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Movie review: 'Road to Perdition'

Englishman Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") has made a hauntingly lyrical movie about that most American of cinematic obsessions, the gangster. And like all great mobster films, most notably "The Godfather" (1972), "Road to Perdition" is about so much more than a gun-toting guy mowing down rivals.

"Perdition"'s hero, mob enforcer Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks), may be on the road to hell, but he'll make a detour through redemption on his way. He is, above all, an honorable man, and as his boss and surrogate father, crime kingpin John Rooney (Paul Newman), says, "A man of honor always pays his debts and keeps his word."

Sullivan spends much of "Perdition," a dark drama set in the Irish underworld of Chicago and its environs in 1931, seeking bloody vengeance after his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and a son are shot. The complicating factor: The assassin is Rooney's only son (Daniel Craig). Even as he plots his revenge, though, Sullivan teaches his surviving boy, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), that there is a better world, one where men don't need guns, and tries to deliver him to it.

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The relationship between fathers and sons is central to the beautifully shot "Perdition," which is based on a graphic novel by Max Allan Collins. "Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers," Rooney says early on. Here, fathers shoulder that trouble no matter the consequences.

Director Mendes wisely gives his premium cast room to breathe. A buttoned-down Hanks is quietly effective as a man who grows even as his world is closing in on him. Newman, conveying power with the tiniest of shrugs, is a wonder. Jude Law, as an eccentric hit man tailing Sullivan, gives the film a welcome jolt of benign malice, though the bowler hat he wears makes him look like Stan Laurel's evil twin.

Bottom line: A glorious journey

Music review: 'Knock on the Sky'

SHeDAISY (Lyric Street)

They don't quite have the cachet of the Dixie Chicks, but this contemporary-country trio featuring sisters Kristyn, Kassidy and Kelsi Osborn is at least the equal of the Chicks musically. On SHeDAISY's first studio album since their 1999 debut, "The Whole SHeBANG," these daughters of Magna, Utah, have polished their seamless harmonies to a high gleam and mastered the light country-rock that infuses their best songs.

Kassidy, who sings lead most of the time, has matured into an accomplished vocalist, developing a rhythmic and bluesy style reminiscent of Bonnie Raitt. Lyrically, however, SHeDAISY's songs still tend to the mundane ("How does it feel?/ You're so ideal," they sing on one tune), although the combative "Get Over Yourself" and the pensive "I Wish I Were the Rain" come as pleasant surprises. Producer Dann Huff and Kristyn, the songwriter in the family, might consider taking some cues from material that has well served other sister acts -- the Forresters, the Boswells or even the Andrewses.

Bottom line: Blossoming, but not yet in full bloom

TV review: 'Monk'

USA Network (Fridays, 10 p.m. ET)

Tony Shalhoub, the unpredictable character actor who last year did a dynamic turn as a flashy, in-your-face lawyer in the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There, does an about-face to play a recessive, insecure detective. Monk is a San Francisco investigator sidelined from the police force by the obsessive-compulsive disorder he developed after the violent death of his wife.

Called in to consult at a murder scene, Monk seems to pull overlooked clues from thin air even as his illness yanks him physically off course. (Later, running from a hit man's car, he zips from one side of the street to the other, compulsively touching parking meters.) This is probably not a clinically accurate portrayal of an OCD sufferer, but Shalhoub's gentle earnestness keeps it from being gimmicky.

Bottom line: Monk shines