I ...

⚪ Am Straight
⚪ Am Gay
🔘 Could listen to Woody Harrelson's Southern dandy describe his emotional state as "peachy" all day long.

Paul Schrader's quasi-update of American Gigolo for the post-9/11 world switches Richard Gere's LA consumerist/cultural capitalist escort, who refuses to do anything homosexual, for Harrelson's Southern gentleman who escorts married DC women to their affairs/solo evenings, for alibi purposes, during the day, loves a paparazzi photojournalist by night. Unlike Gigolo, in which Gere lets it all hang out after sleeping with a woman, Schrader seems a little uncomfortable portraying Carter's homosexuality, putting a barrier between Woody and Moritz Bleibtreu's most vulnerable scene of loving words and eventual embrace. However, after spending 30 years defining the…

In yet another accomplished metaphor of solitude, Paul Schrader's titular character (played with mastery by Woody Harrelson) is an Oscar Wilde acolyte who moves in the high spheres of Washington D.C. giving platonic solace to elder ladies --hence his name-- much like his virtual cousin Julian Kaye, the American Gigolo. (If you ever questioned Richard Gere's sexuality in that film, maybe this one holds some answers.) On the other hand, Harrelson shares a social and political awareness with the rather sociopathic Travis Bickle that surpasses all of the Taxi Driver's abilities regarding a basic trustworthy grasp on reality --or a lack thereof.

On the surface and beneath its silky production, this movie is very much as its hero, Carter Page…

Extremely impressive cast, quality production values and yet Schrader as he seems to often do later in his career fumbles it creating a dreary mess of a movie that reminded me of his recent "The Canyons" and "The Dying of the Light" rather them him at his best. Woody Harrelson plays a "walker" a gay gentlemen who "walks rich women from place to place". He becomes embroiled in a murder plot involving the secret lover of one of his clients (Kristen Scott Thomas).

According to Schrader, Harrelson refused to do publicity for this movie due to not liking his own performance in the film. I don't think he has anything to be ashamed of, I think its one of his…

Paul Schrader's The Walker is a really underrated film, a spiritual sequel to American Gigolo (and Taxi Driver and Light Sleeper) with Schrader again focusing on the night workers that has intermittently obsessed him throughout his career. It is the last of the God's lonely men films he has yet made, another distillation of the nature of self-destruction, of finding a soul in a city, where crime happens on the edges of you consciousness. Schrader's man has risen from the streets, and in class, from the early films, where now he spends his time with rich women as a walker. Walking them from parties, card games and furniture shops, never a threat to their social standing due to his homosexuality…

Extraordinary performance of Harrelson and a joy when one is won to his great talent; a role which would be a joy to tackle for this actor particularly; playing in the ambiguous gap of homosexual/ male escort to rich women with politically powerful husbands, presumably at ease with a gay man’s presence in their lives, like a neuter at the Roman Forum. Harrelson sexuality is in a tottering balance between playing the DC homosexual scene and a sweet but dangerous soft spot for a politican’s wife; forgivable because the role is played by Kristin Scott Thomas, but for this femme fatale to effect this man is genre busting in complicated conflicting ways; as Harrelson barely controls a falsetto trill in…

"You've got to watch yourself. This is a brutal political climate."

Less overtly angry than, say, First Reformed, this feels like Schrader's way of getting his bile out about the Bush/Cheney years. Exhibit A: Making Woody Harrelson's boyfriend (played by Moritz Bleibtreu) a photographer whose studio is festooned with retouched prints from Abu Ghraib which he hopes to hang in his first gallery show. ("I guess if it isn't offensive, it isn't art," Harrelson quips.) There are also multiple references to the vice president's connection with a company profiting off the wars in the Middle East. No need for fill in the blanks.

As for the murder mystery at this film's center, as much as it drives the plot, it's…