Based on the best seller by Bill BrysonMichael C reporting from Sundance to review a film starring the Sundance Kid himself.
Ken Kwapis's A Walk in the Woods has the misfortune of following not one, but two movies about the restorative spiritual powers of hiking, Tracks and Wild. Taken on its own the story of two estranged buddies hiking the Appalachian trail despite everyone saying they are way too old would probably be taken as a bit too broad, a bit too slight. Following hot on the heels of those high quality titles it feels positively featherweight. A Walk in the Woods is a lark, just an opportunity to take a low stakes tromp through the wilderness in the company of two beloved actors, Redford and Nolte. Some of it is amusing, most of it is agreeable, and if it occasional touches on an undercurrent of loss and regret, it is only in a minor way.
Redford plays semi-retired travel writer Bill Bryson as he has reached the age where every conversation is about ailments and funerals. Despite being semi-retired it all becomes too much for him until he announces out of the blue his intention to hike the Appalachian Trail, a plan his wife takes as tantamount to a suicide attempt. She insists he not go alone, but every friend laughs off the idea of an epic senior citizen trek across the East Coast...
That's when a voice from his past appears to rescue him. Katz, played by Nick Nolte, an old travel companion he hasn't been in touch with for decades calls to volunteer for the journey. His wife's standards met, the two men on the shady side of seventy set out to walk from Georgia to Maine.
Redford is supremely laid back in the lead role, possibly to a fault. There isn't a lot of dramatic juice to his journey since he doesn't have much of an arc. We quickly grasp why he would feel the urge to set out on an adventure, even if his own motives seem mysterious to him. Nolte is the main event here. He insists to Redford that he's kept in terrific shape, but when we first see him he is limping off a plane looking like a Sasquatch gone to seed and talking about his two bum knees. His voice has collapsed into a strained growl that makes even his most casual dialogue sound like Tom Waits being choked to death. You wouldn't be confident in his ability to hike across Disneyland let alone a thousand miles of difficult terrain.Yet go he does, red-faced and gasping, making bawdy conversation about the good old days, clearly trying to outrun some demons.
In the supporting cast of big name cameos the champion scene stealer turns out to be Kristen Schaal playing a hiker so annoying she gets the two old-timers sprinting through the wood and hiding behind rocks like a pair of frightened hobbits just to get away from her. Elsewhere Emma Thompson lays down a nice emotional foundation as Bryson's wife and Nick Offerman once again proves the rule that any scene that features Nick Offerman saying the word "craftsmanship" is a good scene.
And that's about all there is to know about A Walk in the Woods. If a breezy road movie about friendship, aging, and getting your head on straight appeals to you then Walk is an amiable enough travel companion. If you wanted to be harsher I suppose you could take the film to task for being too obvious or too shallow, but the bottom line is the film manages to fulfill its modest ambition. If that sounds like I'm damning the film with faint praise, well, maybe I am.
Grade: B-/C+