The Walker

Woody Harrelson shifts gears to play the smooth, languidly charming, proudly gay escort to the rich and powerful women in the Washington, D.C., political elite in Paul Schrader's drama of politics, power and personal redemption. Schrader calls this the third film in the "lonely man" trilogy that began with "American Gigolo" and continued in "Light Sleeper." The silky Carter Page (Harrelson), black sheep of a Southern political dynasty, could be the spiritual son of Julian Kaye from "Gigolo," a man who moves comfortably through the social elite but is abandoned by everyone in his circle when he's implicated in a scandal after trying to cover for a friend. Harrelson is marvelous as the cultured Carter, playing a vain man whose surface is all without a trace of actorly vanity, but the murder mystery and conspiratorial complications are clumsy and many of the scenes are clumsily handled by a director who has done much better in the past. Lauren Bacall, Ned Beatty, Moritz Bleibtreu, Lily Tomlin and Willem Dafoe co-star. The DVD includes a short "making-of" featurette.