One of Robert Redford’s most famous scenes is jumping off a cliff into uncertainty with his best friend in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Forty-six years on, he’s repeating the trick, at his own festival – whose name was inspired by that outlaw classic. In A Walk in the Woods, directed by Ken Kwapis and based on the popular memoir by Bill Bryson, Redford and a pal leap into the uncertainty of old age while hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Redford plays Bryson, who decides well into his career as a travel writer to walk the 1,000 miles from Maine to Georgia – a journey men half his age regularly can’t complete. Fearing for his life, his wife (played by Emma Thompson) forces him take a buddy. The only man he can recruit is a boyhood friend, Katz (Nick Nolte), who he hasn’t spoken to since the pair fell out during a similar trek years back.
Plenty of silly little incidents ensue along the way, with lots of jokes about advancing years. Most of these episodes are far too low-stakes to carry a movie and the bigger picture, about two men past their prime trying to figure out what to do in their dotage, is handled far too simply to have real impact. The result is something that is just fine. It’s pleasant enough to watch, but by no means riveting or revolutionary.
However, the footage of the two of them trudging about is fantastic, all majestic vistas and cute small towns of rural America. For his part, Redford manages to be as charming and winning as he was nearly a half-century back – which goes a long way with such slight stuff. Nolte performs well, but his voice, which sounds like it was taped next to a paper shredder in a tornado, makes for a challenging listen. A Walk in the Woods is certainly no Butch Cassidy, but it is interesting to check in with these two still-compelling codgers. Some leaps are still worth taking, even if they aren’t as superficially dramatic as those attempted in youth.
