I liked it. She sure had a "wild" life, and hiking is one way of our sorting out your mind. I find it fascinating the people she met along the way, and the beauty of nature she encountered, all the while being tormented by so much pain.
She survived to tell the tale. Glad i watched it.
I enjoyed it as well. It's a pretty good movie, based on a true story, about a troubled person trying to find their way in life. I can relate.
There was some nice cinematography and Reese did a good job as the lead. My understanding is that this was an important story for her and I believe she also produced the film.
If you enjoy long-distance hiking movies, another one you should check out is The Way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5VZKWcgw6c
Read the book. It makes the film look pathetic. Even to the point that I felt that people who hadn't read the book would have found the film to be a wreck. I'm surprised it's as well received as it was and sad to see that there were very important points passages in the film that would have worked out brilliantly in the film that were skipped.
shareI watched it tonight, it's alright. Way too many flashbacks. I honestly got tired of seeing Laura Dern's face every 5 minutes. Too many potential rape scares too just to create drama and suspense. I know it could happen while being on the trail like this but once was enough.
Anyhow, I wanted to see it and compare it to films like 127 Hours, Tracks, Into the Wild, Cast Away etc.....
I have to say it, Tracks is the best of the bunch. They're quite similar though. Tracks is also a true story about a woman that walks across a desert. But this film takes place in Australia. It's just a much more intriguing film than Wild. I highly recommend it if you like this movie.
Link... https://moviechat.org/tt2167266/Tracks
Oddly enough, these two movies came out only 1 year apart. Not sure if someone got the same idea but I would have to study it a bit more to find out.
Anyhow, I'll give Wild a 5.9 out of 10. It's not horrible but yeah, I wasn't that impressed with it. It has a few good moments though.
"Tracks" is a terrific film, isn't it?
Nice to see the story of someone doing things right! "Wild" was the story of someone surviving her own issues and incidentally the wilderness, but you can't get away with self-indulgent screw-ups in the Australian outback. Out there, you get it right or you die, and Davidson got it right.
Hey Otter,
I was thinking you might post in this thread if you saw it. You replied to one of my threads on the Tracks board. Well, I finally got a chance to see Wild, it's actuality free on TubiTV right now. And yeah, I thought it could have been so much better. I don't get why they chose to do so many flashbacks, it's really strange....
I know they were trying to build the main character but 4 or 5 flashbacks would have been enough. When it gets to two dozen or so, it's just way too much. The movie just loses focus on the main theme.
However, I did like parts of it, I was able to relate to her situation to some degree because I lost my mother to a terminal illness as well. So, that part of the film did work pretty good but unfortunately that was the only part of the movie I could really get into. For the most part, it's too dramatic for an adventure film.
Tracks is superior but I will have to check out that other hiking movie, The Way, mentioned by a previous poster in here. Have you seen it? But yeah, Tracks is underrated on IMDB at 7.1/10, but at least it's got a well deserved 82 on Rotten Tomatoes.
Perhaps you have a point about the flashbacks, I suppose it would have been possible to do what "Tracks" did, and keep the flashbacks that explained the character's motivation to a minimum. But the number of flashbacks in "Wild" didn't bother me at all, because they gave me so many chances to see Laura Dern being radiant.
IMHO both films were dramatic films more than adventures, largely concerned with exploring the motives that led these women to face loneliness and danger, and also with exploring their reactions once the danger and loneliness were there to be dealt with. But a big reason that I prefer "Tracks" was that it was more adventurous, and IMHO part of that was because it did a MUCH better job of bringing the wilderness to vivid cinematic life! "Wild" kept the focus on Reese Witherspoon rather than the mountains she was traveling through, but "Tracks" let the Australian wilderness take center stage, in the Outback humans have no options but to play by nature's rules, and we could *feel* it bending Davidson to its will.
In "Wild" the isolation of the trail forced the heroine to face herself, but in "Tracks" the heroine had to face something larger than herself, and let it change her. It felt deeply profound, almost like a religious experience.
All good points.
Tracks had some flashbacks too but they were kept to a minimum. Personally, I didn't care for Laura Dern in this movie. I usually kind of like her but she just didn't have a good vibe going in this film. To me, something about her character was just off. And when she was on the hospital bed she looked healthy. They didn't even make her look sick. lol...
And so true about Tracks having a bit of a religious experience to it. And it had a much more climactic ending to it, whereas, Wild's ending just didn't hit home like Tracks did.
Well face it, the makers of "Tracks" had the advantage of using a better story! Woman-vs-nature is just more gripping than woman-vs-her-own-foolishnes.
Free Pluto streaming TV has shown "Tracks" on its movie channel, it bears rewatching.
I liked it a lot too. I am getting older but I would really like to go on a hike like this. The PCT, or the AT ... or the one in the movie "The Way" with Martin Sheen, the pilgrimage across Spain .... that would be so amazing. This was a wonderful movie.
shareBrux, you should definitely check out Tracks. It's just better than Wild. At least I think it is.