Overview
A woman with a tragic past decides to start her new life by hiking for one thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Cheryl strayed from the path after her mother’s death and to find her way again she decides to hike 1100 miles to redemption along the Pacific Crest Trail.
It really is a roadtrip movie – well a hiking journey movie – and Cheryl’s experiences along the way are small, focusing on the here and now – be it meeting men she is not sure she can trust, various animals, or kind strangers. The storytelling is interspersed with flashbacks allowing us to learn a bit more about who she is and why she is on this hike.
Reese Witherspoon is not so easy to buy as a self-destructive, recovering heroine junkie sleeping around with anyone and everyone. But she sort of pulls it off, even if the graphic elements of those scenes really don’t add a whole lot of credibility to her character and to the movie other than providing a bit more insight into the reasons for her journey.
The cinematography is a bit underwhelming and a bit of a missed opportunity as some of the landscapes along the way are beautiful; and the soundtrack is fairly bland. But overall it is a nice enough movie; it succeeds in keeping you engaged as enough happens along the way. It doesn’t attempt to be grander than it is: one woman’s long hike to get her life a bit back on track.
