No heroes, this time

just ordinary

DiCaprio likes the challenges of his 'Revolutionary Road' role - portraying the father next door

NEW YORK - In Revolutionary Road, Leonardo DiCaprio does not play a CIA agent, a reclusive multimillionaire or a South African diamond smuggler. Instead, he plays Frank Wheeler, a suburban husband, father and office worker - a character of whom it could be said that there's nothing unusual or extraordinary at all.

"I suppose it would be a first," DiCaprio says of this exceedingly normal, almost banal role. "A lot of times, movies don't get made unless it's about something larger than life, or something people find is more interesting than" - and here he laughs - "the monotony of everyday existence."

But Revolutionary Road did get made, and it's not your everyday Hollywood product. The movie, which opens next week, features two of today's biggest stars, DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, in their first film together since the blockbuster Titanic appeared more than a decade ago. But instead of grand sets and elaborate costumes, this comparatively low-budget effort focuses on character and dialogue. And its penetrating, somewhat harrowing story stands out even in a winter movie season filled with serious dramas. All of which might make Revolutionary Road, directed by Winslet's husband, Sam Mendes, the Ordinary People of 2008.

DiCaprio, 34, says the project was spearheaded by Winslet, a longtime fan of Richard Yates' critically praised but largely overlooked 1961 novel. The story, set in 1955, focuses on Frank Wheeler and his wife, April, an attractive, 30-ish couple whose move to a pleasant but lifeless Connecticut suburb hastens the collapse of their marriage and the evaporation of their youthful idealism.

Like John Updike's Rabbit, Run, which preceded Yates' book (and perhaps stole its thunder) by a year, Revolutionary Road looked beyond the green lawns and modern appliances that supposedly defined the postwar American dream. But while Updike found a poignant humor there, Yates found false promises and personal failures.

"This is a book that's deeply beloved by a large number of people, but there are also people who just react to it and have to put the book down," says Justin Haythe, who adapted Yates' novel for the screen. "There's that shudder of recognition as he paints people in all their flaws."