Walking Out review: British filmmakers take to the mountains of Montana with this gripping, engrossing tale of a father and son on a very extreme bonding exercise.
Walking Out review by Paul Heath at the 2017 Sundance London film festival.
Walking Out review
Walking Out is one of those films that had had zero expectation and zero knowledge going in to see it – and the experience was all the better for it, so I will attempt not to spoil much with this review.
Screening for the first time outside of the main Sundance film festival in Utah, British filmmakers Alex Smith and Andrew J. Smith’s movie, a voyage of discovery, father and son bonding and all-out adventure in the wilderness, revolves around 14-year-old David (Josh Wiggins) who ventures to rural Montana to spend some quality time with his father, outdoorsman Cal (Matt Bomer).
The plan is to take to the mountains, first by truck, and then on a five-mile overnight hike where Cal hopes to give David his first opportunity to shoot his first game, much like he did with his own father (Bill Pullman) thirty years earlier. Of course, and probably slightly predictably, it all doesn’t go quite to plan and a horrific incident near the top of the mountain changes their plans entirely.
Walking Out review
For all its predictability, the Smith brothers’ sometimes harrowing and indeed gruelling film, often throws the occasional curve ball. What you first expect to happen very often does not, and the film works because although you think you know which way the father and son’s journey will take them, it very often does not.
Based on a short story by David Quammen, adapted into feature form by the talented sibling directors, the film feels very personal, so very intimate and oh so very heartbreakingly. One feels that it works so wonderfully is the detail that this is indeed directed by two filmmakers who are related, something which looks to have transferred to its two leading men Wiggins and Bomer who, quite literally, must carry a large majority of the film on their own. Bomer shows huge maturity as an actor as the 40-something father clearly trying to make more of a man of his video game-playing son, a kid maybe used to rely on others to carry him through life. Pullman’s character is seen largely in flashback, the actor not having much in the way of dialogue or that much screen time.
Walking Out review
It’s interesting to see how the story unfolds, the narrative turning massively around halfway in catapulting the film into an entirely new, untrod direction. It’s exhausting to watch in places, but just as the young David strives to continue, us as the viewer are with him for the entirety, the feeling resulting in a deeply involving, engrossing survival tale that plays like The Reverent meets Deliverance, though it its entirely unique way.
To say I had a wonderful time with Walking Out is the wrong description, but as a cinema experience there’s little that compares to it that has seen the inside of a multiplex this year. It’s a very simple story so very well told by two filmmakers to definitely keep an eye on in the future. Remarkable and absorbing stuff.
Walking Out review by Paul Heath, June 2017.
Walking Out is set for an October 2017 release Stateside but is awaiting a UK release. It screened at the 2017 Sundance London film festival.
