林中漫步 (A Walk in the Woods)

A Walk in the Woods is a pretty good film.

 

Small-budged with some big-shot actors in, the film is simple, light-hearted, somewhat funny, and with a fresh life-appreciating style long unseen since 911. Without any flashy scene of gun-fights, car-chasing, a superhero defying the gravity and humiliating the rest of natural laws, nor a terrorist attack averted at the last second and any far-reaching dramatization of human struggles and confrontations that often end on a high and happy note, it is just a small straightforward story of two men who become bored enough to try something impossible under a blue sky. They decide to finish Appalachian Trail by walking. Unsuccessfully at last.

After many heart-enlightened days, some mind-twisting nights, and a couple of unexpected and even dangerous incidents in between, the men lacking of the otherwise ultimate self-satisfaction become more prudent enough to abort their expedition and go back to celebrate their pre-adventure life with one thing in common, a happier heart. One resumes his Greyhound bus travelling to go on about his wandering life all over the place, while another returns to his wife who, after having failed to put a lid on her husband's desire for a long walk of over 2,000 miles in the woods, romantically parlays her beautiful British accent into the least demanding term on him, "Good luck, and try not to die out there", when she is seeing him off to his doomed mission.

While having a lovely and understanding wife with bone-shattering accent echoing around is definitely a man's great lifetime achievement, he may also need a thousand other ways to feel settled with his imperfection with a happy heart.