Metacritic Film

Walker, The

Starring Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily Tomlin, Lauren Bacall, Willem Dafoe, Ned Beatty, Moritz Bleibtreu, and Mary Beth Hurt

MPAA RATING: R for language, some violent material and nude images

THINKFilm
Drama
108 minutes | Color
USA / UK
Released In Theaters December 7, 2007

A contemporary drama set in Washington, DC, The Walker centers around Carter Page (Harrelson), a well-heeled and popular socialite who serves as confidant, companion, and card partner to some of the capital's leading ladies. These pampered women are married to the most powerful men in America, and when their husbands are too busy running the country to attend to their wives, the wives turn to their "gay best friend," Carter, for warmth, wit, and wisdom. Carter's loyalty is tested when his dearest friend (Scott Thomas) finds herself on the brink of a scandal that could destroy her reputation and her husband's career. Offering to cover for her, Carter suppresses incriminating evidence, only to find himself the chief suspect in a criminal investigation. Suddenly, this well-connected man-about-town is a pariah, hounded by the police and forced to find the true culprit and clear his name. More importantly, he must reexamine whether it is important to be accepted by a society based on betrayal, hypocrisy, and corruption. A tale of moral redemption that takes the form of a mystery-thriller, The Walker is the third part of Schrader's "lonely man" trilogy, which began with American Gigolo (1980) and also includes Light Sleeper (1992). (THINKFilm)

WRITTEN BY
Paul Schrader

DIRECTED BY
Paul Schrader

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

55 / 100

Critic Reviews

75	ReelViews This is not Schrader's finest work. The script is not tight, the ending disappoints, and there's a little too much drawn from "American Gigolo." But there are some great one-liners, compelling actors, and well-developed characters.
75	Chicago Sun-Times A quietly enthralling film because it contains the murder and the investigation within Carter's smooth calm.
75	San Francisco Chronicle G. Allen Johnson Has a wicked sense of humor.
70	Variety Leslie Felperin Even if this isn't Schrader's best, it's hardly his worst.
63	TV Guide Though ultimately flawed, the film's depiction of velvet-gloved cruelty and matter-of-fact betrayal is surprisingly potent, and it's pure pleasure to watch Bacall prowling the corridors of power, tossing her golden mane and tossing off world-weary observations in a voice pitched somewhere between a purr and a growl.
63	New York Post Harrelson's charming flamboyance - seen to great effect in "No Country for Old Men" - is a great fit for Carter, who carries no small amount of self-loathing under his carefully coifed toupee.
63	New York Daily News Schrader's main interest is not in the mystery, per se, but in the political intrigue of incestuous Washington, where conflicts of interest are the norm and morality is indeed relative. The points are well-taken, but Harrelson's performance often gets in their way.
60	Village Voice This is a serious movie and, gliding around the center of power, a stylish one. But, like its protagonist, The Walker is unable to close the deal.
60	The Hollywood Reporter While it can be labeled a thriller or a murder mystery, the film is talky, unhurried, contains little action and shows more interest in how characters think and behave than in its plot.
58	Entertainment Weekly The brittle, very ''written'' catty quips meant to characterize Washington hypocrisy sound perfunctory; the story of an aging, self-hating homosexual who goes home alone to his lacquered town house feels ancient as well as uncomfortable for the writer-director. (Harrelson seems both game and ill at ease.)
50	The New York Times By the end of The Walker a movie that begins as a dazzling round of charades has deteriorated into a plodding game of Clue.
50	Los Angeles Times The whole thing feels fusty and forced.
50	Portland Oregonian While it's hard to dismiss his intention or effort, Harrelson's one-note performance sinks the film.
50	Chicago Reader The main compensation is Harrelson's well-judged and finely shaded performance; the secondary ones are the ladies he hangs out with -- Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, and Kristin Scott Thomas. But the rest of this mainly drifts.
42	Seattle Post-Intelligencer A mystery that isn't mysterious, a thriller that's barely thrilling.
40	Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt Guilty of the most mortal of all movie sins: It's dull.

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