Writer/director Paul Schrader plays a variation on his
familiar theme of “sex as commodity” with The Walker, a
character study flimsily disguised as a murder mystery. Schrader also
wrote the rickety script, a disappointingly confusing vehicle in which
too much information is dispensed through dialogue and name dropping.
It’s a far cry from Schrader’s glory days, when he wrote Taxi
Driver and Raging Bull.
As Car (short for Carter Page III), Woody Harrelson turns in an
excellent performance, displaying currents of emotion underneath his
character’s gay Southern affectations. Car is a “walker”—a
sexually non-threatening man who escorts rich wives to gala events
while their politician husbands are too busy to bother. Car also plays
a weekly bridge game with three Washington harpies, played by Lauren
Bacall, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Lily Tomlin. But the game is beside
the point—it’s really just a chance for them to gossip in the
sort of arch dialogue found only in movies like this.
And so it goes—until Car chauffeurs Thomas’ character to a
rendezvous, and she finds her lover stabbed to death. Soon, Car is
embroiled in intrigue and scandal, the details of which are too wispy
for the audience to care about.
There are some fine performances here, especially from Harrelson and
the criminally underused Tomlin. Willem Dafoe and Ned Beatty also make
brief appearances as big shots who may or may not have played a role in
the murder.
And that “may or may not” vagueness is the The Walker‘s
problem. The connections between—and the motivations of—its
various characters are barely developed. (Example: Even after finishing
the film, I know Beatty’s character had something to do with the
murder… but I couldn’t tell you what, exactly.) Much like the
overheard gossip its characters trade in, The Walker provides
glimmers of detail, with hardly any context—and it’s pretty
impossible to get into a film when you feel like you’re only getting
half the story.