Review of The Walker (2007) by Roxanne R — 28 Jul 2009

I liked this movie for a few reasons, primarily because it is a morality tale and the message it sends..also since I thought Roger Ebert's review describes the film perfectly I will post it here:

Carter Page likes to tell his friends: "I'm not naive, I'm superficial." His easy, ingratiating manner is ideal for his vocation, which is to act as the unpaid companion of rich society ladies as they attend events without their husbands. Quietly gay, he adores his ladies as friends and sponsors a weekly canasta game for them that turns into a gossip fest. Paul Schrader's "The Walker" shows him moving smoothly through Washington, D.C., where his father was a senator who investigated Watergate; his mild Southern drawl reflects Carter's heritage as the grandson of a tobacco tycoon and the great-grandson of a slave owner. Apparently supported by an inheritance, he is content to be well-dressed, witty and good company.

His three steady "girls," all of a certain age and formidable instincts, are Lynn Lockner (Kristin Scott Thomas), Abigail Delorean (Lily Tomlin) and Natalie Van Miter (Lauren Bacall), who observes that the difficulty with marrying a rich man is that you don't get to have the money, you only get to look at it. Carter is the model of discretion, so much so that Lynn Lockner, the wife of a senator (Willem Dafoe), trusts him to drive her to her weekly meetings with a paid male prostitute in Georgetown. Nobody will recognize his car. He waits outside.One afternoon, she returns to the car almost immediately, trembling. She has discovered her lover stabbed to death. She can't report the murder without involving herself and her husband in scandal. Carter instinctively steps up and takes the hit like a Southern gentleman: He tells the police he discovered the body, and so becomes their leading suspect. As Carter looks into the crime, the murky undergrowth of Washington corruption begins to exude aromas, and Carter involves his own lover, a young Turk named Emek Yoglu (Moritz Bleibtreu), in their own investigation to save his skin.I found it fascinating to see Carter Page III discovering under fire that he is, after all, a more loyal friend than his famous father, and a better man.

The last sentence in Ebert's review resonates and makes this movie worth watching it because when it comes down to it, Carter Page is a true and loyal friend! Recommended!