Cynical Cinema

The Walker is a movie that knows exactly what it wants to be.  It knows exactly where it’s going, exactly how to get there, and exactly how long it’s going to take.  But that’s kind of like saying the same of a Michael Bolton album.  Sure, he made the exact album he wanted to make, but why in God’s name would anyone want to listen?  And in the same way, I can’t understand why people would want to watch The Walker.  Well, the cast in impressive.  Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin, Lauren Bacall and Kristen Scott Thomas.  Which might get some people to rent this film.  But I can’t see it getting them to like it once they have done so.

Harrelson plays a gay man in Washington who doesn’t seem to do much except hang out with the society ladies and play canasta, gossiping about everything tawdry that goes on around him.  He is referred to as a “walker”, a man who walks around with rich women.  I don’t know if these people actually exist, or are referred to as such, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.  Harrelson has this fake southern accent which is disconcerting at best, obnoxious at worst.  He comes off as a gossipy cross between Truman Capote and Scarlett O’Hara, which is not a character I thought we ever needed to see.  His friendship with these women is a shallow one, based almost entirely on surface appearances.  His life outside his gossip-sewing circle is also shallow and surface-deep.  This is what we learn in the first half hour.

And that first half hour, as with the rest of the film, is meticulously planned out and executed.  Soon, Harrelson is driving Kristen Scott Thomas to visit the man with whom she is having an extra-marital affair.  When she finds that man murdered, a vague plot is exposed.  A vague plot, involving vague motives, featuring vague power players in Washington with a vague denouement and a vague resolution.  Shadowy figures pass through the scene, old friends turn out not to really be friends, and Harrelson takes a vague stand based on some vague morals and some vague motivations, which seems to basically involve him being vaguely questioned by vaguely politically motivated cops.

You get the sense that this film is vague?  Well, it is.  Nothing concrete ever really happens, certainly nothing exciting happens, and although the narrative is pretty straightforward, the movie barely scratches the surface of what surely is meant to be a very complex political murder plot.  There is just not enough here to interest people, and on top of that, you have Woody Harrelson playing the central role, one which is just plain irritating.  Skip The Walker.