Review of Nobody Walks (2012) by Christopher H — 06 Feb 2013

Rather self-indulgent, "Nobody Walks" hints at thoughtful performances and poetic revelations but never quite delivers. Olivia Thirlby is gorgeous with short hair, but her wishy-washy, home-wrecking naivety works against her performance and leaves a bitter taste by the end.

However, she does show a depth of maturity as an actress, unseen in her previous performances, showing signs of a dependable leading lady, given the right direction and part. John Krasinski is the only shred of hope for the film and even he is unable to rectify any sort of emotional growth or understanding, as Rosemarie DeWitt twaddles through her role with a blank expression.

The characters learn nothing from their exploits and after the credits you really wonder if anyone in the film is any better off than they were in the beginning and whether anything actually happened in the course of the film.

The truth is, when films have such reckless abandon for sticking to the mundane of everyday life, I tend to believe they are based on the writer's personal life, basically an autobiography with hardly any of the facts changed.

And though this may be interesting to the writer, the people that eventually view the film have zero emotional connection to the characters, similar to the phrase, "I guess you had to be there".

Having never seen Ry Russo-Young's previous directing endeavors, I have nothing to compare it to, but "Nobody Walks" screams of a nubile director still searching for that distinction between herself and the countless other independent directors producing middle level variants of everyday life.