Walking Out

Flashbacks like an after-school special are the device of choice to force the audience to care about the characters...this backfires, of course. Perhaps there is a film out there using flashbacks that isn't this weak and insipid. It's not JUST that, offensive and hack-y as they are. One never gets behind these characters. The actors try but the script is poor. The writer writes conflict but never creates it. We cannot get behind them. But we are constantly reminded that we're supposed to be behind them and there is supposed to be some deep reality to their lives. It's maybe an American pitfall these days. Just tell a story why don't you? Don't try to make us care. We will care if you give us something to care about. But not everyone is Graham Greene. There are other jobs in Hollywood, after all.

I'm a simple moviegoer with pretty average expectations.

I saw this film the first weekend of Sundance 2017 without knowing too much about it. I was excited about it because I'm a fan of Matt Bomer and I had seen Josh Wiggins in another Sundance movie, Hellion, in 2014. I don't often write film reviews but I've been wanting to share my thoughts on this movie since seeing it.

While the majority of this review is focused on the parts of the film I disliked, please understand that I did not find this film to be a disgrace and I'm not vehemently opposed to it. There's a lot that I thought simply didn't hit the mark or simply didn't appeal to me. Before starting my tirade, though, I want to commend the film for its beautiful location and cinematography.

And here's my tirade: I disliked the score as it felt out of place or ineffective at conveying the mood of the scene in most places.

I disliked the world building and character development. I cared very little about either protagonist because I didn't really know anything about them. One is just a pretty normal kid from a broken family and the other is a guy who presumably spent his entire life hunting while taking a brief hiatus to father a child and then get a divorce.

On a similar note, the entire first hour of the movie (or the chance to learn more about the characters) was mostly just redundancy...and walking...lots of walking. Perhaps this was an artistic decision in order to help us empathize with David's (the son) boredom or to articulate to the audience the patience of hunting and/or the depth to which the two are in the wild. In any case, as a film-goer, it was wearisome.

The climax of the movie happens a little over halfway through but the sense of danger is quickly diminished. I'm not some high octane junkie looking for action at every turn but I thought the movie lacked urgency or purpose. I was sorely disappointed to find that after a very slow crawl to a single moment of excitement, we return back to another very slow crawl until the end of the movie. There seemed to be a lot more potential for telling the story in a way that incited a heightened sense of fear. Instead, we got melancholy until the end.

For a film that is clearly meant to establish an emotional connection to its audience, it lacked a strong narrative and relatable characters.

Elmer Fudd sings this song in several cartoons, and he is referenced by the grandfather in this grim story of survival in the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness. That may be the only hint of humor to be found, as a father and son track down moose until tragedy strikes. The second half of the picture is as gritty and harrowing as any you will ever see this side of a National Geographic special.

Cal evidently gets custody of his son David every summer, but in the mountain country where he lives it's always winter. David is not happy with the arrangement and finds out right away he can't get a signal on his iphone. He is a city kid and his dad is a hunter; they mix like oil and water. They begin as polar opposites but in the end they are bonded, in as gripping and unexpected a finale as you can find in a slow starting movie.

I disagree with a reviewer who felt the music background was inappropriate. I felt it was just right - unobtrusive and complementary. Never saw either of these actors before but they were effective and had chemistry between them. "Walking Out" is an underrated indie and deserves a bigger market. It starts like a travelogue but is a very affecting film; amazing what the human spirit can do when faced with severe adversity.

N.B. The setting is similar to "Wind River", which has a more intricate plot.

City boy David (Josh Wiggins) joins his estranged reclusive father Cal (Matt Bomer) in remote Montana for some hunting. There are flashbacks to a young Cal with his father Clyde (Bill Pullman) on a similar hunting trip. David is forced to abandon his phone in the isolated wilderness. An incident with a bear leaves them struggling in the middle of nowhere.

The incident is problematic. David's stupidity colors the movie in a bad light. He can be clueless but he shouldn't be stupid. I was with the boy up to that point. It's unnecessary to have David be so dumb. Did he think that he's in a petting zoo? Otherwise, this is perfectly good survival in the woods movie. The father and son relationship has a good strained vibe although Matt Bomer is no classic woodsman. He's too pretty and needs a bigger beard to cover that face up.

Greetings again from the darkness. Man vs Nature movies tend to remind us of both our tenacity when things go badly, and our lack of control or overall insignificance in the big picture of life. This tends to be true in the mountains, on the water, under the ocean, in caves and in space. Twin brothers Alex Smith and Andrew J Smith have adapted and co-directed this film from a short story by David Quammen. The filmmakers were raised in Montana, and have an inherent feel for the stunning and often treacherous landscape.

Matt Bomer, in a sharp left-turn from his usual pretty-boy roles, plays Cal, a live-off-the-land mountain man with seemingly few needs outside of food, water and a desire to connect with his teenage son through a hunting trip. Josh Wiggins (who exploded on the scene in 2014's HELLION) plays David, a suburban Texas boy who is out of his element without his cell phone. The opening panoramic view of snow- covered mountains is contrasted with David's engrossed concentration on his hand-held video game as the plane approaches the landing zone. "How was your year?" is David's greeting from Cal, instantly elucidating their relationship.

Cal excitedly reports to David that he has been tracking a bull moose for 11 weeks, and wants this to be David's first big game kill. We are constantly reminded that this isn't trophy hunting, and that this single moose will provide Cal enough meat for a year. David has no real interest in killing a moose, but longs to connect with his father … and "longs" is interpreted through the teenager's shrugs, glances and body language. Wiggins plays David with the subtle authenticity of the teenagers most of us have known, raised, and at one time, been.

As Cal explains the history of the mountains, he also works in stories of his youth when his father (David's grandfather) was teaching him the ethics of nature. Numerous flashbacks feature Bill Pullman and Alex Newstaedter (as young Cal). The flashbacks are a bit artsy, and sometimes intrusive, but in the end, form a parallel story structure that works.

A couple of poor decisions lead to an accident that could be straight out of the Dick Cheney's field guide to hunting. Cal and David are both injured – Cal severely so. It's at this point where David must grow up quickly. The skills he has learned, or at least absorbed, are now necessary if he expects to save his father's life. What was a story of two polar opposite blood relatives trying to connect, transitions instantaneously into one of survival, maturity, persistence, and love.

Movies such as THE REVENANT and THE EDGE come to mind, but this one is short on thrills, and is instead a trudging struggle to survive – taking a quiet approach, rather than a showy one. Lily Gladstone, fresh off her terrific work in CERTAIN WOMEN, has a brief sequence near the film's end. The beautiful landscape and terrain is captured by cinematographer Todd McMullen, while Ernst Reijseger's score effectively complements the odd mixture of slow pacing and non-stop danger. Whether you are trying to live a reclusive life off the land, or simply one of the many parents attempting to connect with their kids, keep in mind that regardless of the beauty of the mountains, "snow is not our friend".