Synopsis
Everyone loves a good scandal
An escort who caters to Washington D.C.'s society ladies becomes involved in a murder case.
The Walker
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Alternative Titles
Escort Boy - The Walker, The Walker - Ein Freund gewisser Damen, O Acompanhante, 漫步者, A kísérő, ההולך, Компаньонът, Ескорт для пані, Эскорт для дам, 步行者, Facet do towarzystwa, 워커, ესკორტი ქალბატონებისთვის
Genres
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Releases by Date
Theatrical
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Germany12
10 Aug 2007
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Ireland15A
30 Sep 2007
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USAR
Releases by Country
Germany
13 Feb 2007
- Theatrical12
Ireland
10 Aug 2007
- Theatrical15A
USA
30 Sep 2007
- TheatricalR
Popular reviews
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There's a "lonely man" movie for every stage of Schrader's existence:
Taxi Driver: angry young misfit
American Gigolo: overconfident disreputable ingénu
Light Sleeper: panicked forty-something on the brink of crisis
The Walker: pruning, jaded raconteur
First Reformed/Card Counter/Master Gardner: haunted elder searching for anything to still believe inWoody apparently hated his performance in this, which is proof not all artists are correct in their estimations of their own work (see also: Burt in BOOGIE NIGHTS). An undervalued piece of melancholy noir all around.
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This doesn't get talked much, but very much belong to Schrader's recurring Bressonian obssesions. I didn't care for it much at the time, but it aged very well as a time capsule for the later days of Bush's government. It feels for Washington as this paranoid dog eat dog place is strong. The other strength is the acting which is first rate throughout (including some late career good parts for Lauren Bacall and Ned Beatty) and Harrelson makes for one of Schrader's strongest leads.
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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…
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Rich white women are totally willing to throw gay men under the bus who is surprised
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Carter Page III (Woody Harrelson) is a walker, an escort in the most traditional sense, accompanying D.C.'s society ladies at various events in place of their busy husbands. He's a gay man with a syrupy southern drawl with the impossible legacy of a father that investigated Watergate to live up to. He's a man who knows his place, a gentleman in spirit but still a servant to the whims of the women he escorts.
Still, he enjoys his work and the lifestyle it affords him and he has his regulars: Lynn (Kristin Scott Thomas)Abigail (Lily Tomlin), and Natalie (Lauren Bacall). His unique status as a constant companion and asexual role in their lives means that occasionally he drives Lynn to…
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nobody’s favorite Schrader, and good luck finding it. That said, if his schtick is your bag, here it is uncut, all his “God’s Lonely Man” pet obsessions, crystallized and cranky as hell. And hey, if you really wanted to, you could make a case that Paul said all he had to say in 2007, and that all his more recent full blown masterpieces are just cover versions of this, a classic Calvinist-leaning parable in the Schrader mode, a reckoning with the unique depravity of the 21st century. For one, he rolls out Abu Ghraib as a plot point a decade or so before Card Counter, and goes straight for the third rail, showing it as kink, as po-mo art, as…
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Watching this in a theater (on Schrader’s personal print no less) brought forth the disturbing revelation that the mid-to-late-2000s have become something of an antiquated style.
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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…
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Woody Harrelson is great as a flamboyant southern “walker”. A Walker refers to a single guy paid to escort rich women around to fancy events like the opera so their husbands don’t have to go. The backdrop is Washington D.C. and he definitely sticks out in that political environment yet seamlessly fits in with high society as he is always full of quips, gossip, and he’s quite debonair.
Kristen Scott Thomas, Lily Tomlin, Lauren Bacall, Ned Beatty, and Willem Dafoe make up the supporting cast, what a cast. This starts out humorous and playful, with such a unique idea. Then Schrader introduces a murder mystery in which our main man Woody is a suspect. It slowly loses its charm as it enters familiar territory about the lobbyist’s murder in D.C. What political figures have the most to gain? Who’s really behind this? How high up does it go? Yada yada, seen that all before.
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“Don’t start pulling on that string, or the whole fabric of our world will unravel.”
All the credits are in Helvetica, everything is inexplicably tinted yellow and every other scene transition is a slooooow fade. It’s late-style strangeness like only Schrader can do it! Starring Woody Harrelson as Paul Schrader’s idea of a gay Paul Schrader protagonist - very funny coming from the guy behind Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters!
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(conversation between music supervisor and Paul Schrader)
“Are you sure you only want to license *checks notes* 2 Bryan Ferry songs and a *checks notes again* Roxy Music remix?”
“Yup. I have it on good authority that is what the gays listen to.” -
Strong work from Woody Harrelson as one of Schrader's Lonely Men can't overcome the rambly writing or the tepid central mystery. American Gigolo this is not, but it certainly wants to be.
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