Movie Review: The Way

So, I’ve decided to try to cut a few minutes out of the podcast by limiting the movies I talk about on the podcast.  I will still probably pull one recent DVD release to talk about that I think is interesting but considering I can watch anywhere from 2 to 7 movies a week, I figured the Tumblr would be a good way to talk about all of the extra things I’ve watched that aren’t extremely podcast worthy.



The first of these is the movie The Way.  This movie was a limited release in theaters in October 2011.  As podcast listeners probably know, 2011 was one of those years where I literally tried to watch pretty much everything released in theaters for the entire calendar year, whether in the theaters or later on DVD release.  I’m also trying to do the same thing for 2012 (and hopefully onward as time permits).  To prove how insane I am this is my 173rd movie watched from 2011.  I have two more on my list (Sherlock Holmes 2 and Arthur Christmas) to end it at a nice even 175.  Enough about my insanity, let’s go on to The Way.

The Way was written and directed by Emilio Estevez and stars his father Martin Sheen.  This is the sequel to D2: The Mighty Ducks and revolves around the character of Tom, played by Martin Sheen, who is a California Doctor that unexpectedly gets a phone call that his only son, played by Emilio Estevez (Charlie Sheen does not exist in that universe, which is awesome), was killed on the first day of doing this 2-month long walk called the Camino de Santiago. Tom goes to France to pick up his son’s belongings and instead of going back to California, he decides to complete the walk that his son started, sprinkling his son’s ashes along the way at memorable points.

I really enjoyed this movie far more than I thought I would.  This was a powerful and inspirational story that didn’t rely on beating you over the head with a religious theme. There were some undertones but considering how the walk is steeped in religious iconography, it could have gone more that way (pun intended) but instead focused on the characters.  Martin Sheen gave a tremendous performance and the supporting cast of trekkers, who were all doing the walk for different reasons, were all were interesting and provided rich, deep characters to surround Tom.

I would whole heartily recommend this flick if you’re looking for a movie that warms your soul and feel like backpacking across Europe but are far too lazy to do so.