Walden

"No one gives a damn. Why should you?"

Walden is directed by Mick Davis and stars Emile Hirsch, Shane West, Kelli Garner and Tania Raymonde.

When small town court stenographer Walden Dean discovers he has a terminal illness he decides to become a vigilante to punish the people who deserve it. Emile Hirsch gives one of his best performances here as what I could only explain as "Dexter if he was on the spectrum." Seriously he really sold this role. His performance might come across as grating to some but I thought it worked for this movie.

Overall this movie isn't great but for a DTV thriller this was engaging to watch and competently made. The ending also sets up a sequel which I would be down to see.

A stenographic vigilante is not a common theme and opens up vast number of avenues for the plot to grow. But the movie's first half was too distracted with introducing the manic nature of the central character rather than focusing on the plot's progress. Introducing irrelevant characters such as romantic partners wasn't making much effect or useful. Final twist was great but police showing their findings for the sake of neighborly acquaintance was one out of many illogical things in this story. However the visuals were haunting and performances were sincere. Walden is a story that's very much interesting when summed up.

I feel like the pacing and writing was massively meant for television. It was good film but but protracted at points and then wrapped up too quickly. It felt it had threads to unwrap but none of them did in a one hour and forty minute film. Acting was great and production very good but it did, at times, feel like a television series.

Main guy camps up the main role but presumably on purpose to make it feel less droll with the subject matter in hand which at times is as dark as it gets.

Enjoyed this but interested to know if it was meant instalments which might mean more films or a spin off series.

Unlike other critics here, I did not feel this movie was slow-paced or boring or uneventful. I think some people just need lots of action, murder and thrills when they watch anything these days. In my opinion this movie is very good, but not great. I think the main issue lies with the main character. Anyone who has lived in the south for a considerable amount of time has known a guy like Walden. The seersucker suit, bow tie-wearing, seemingly asexual, forever single goober who's everyone's friend and shows up at ever social function to talk everyone's ear off is a staple character in every southern town. You always sense there's something dark underneath that person, but you hope to heaven that darkness never comes out. Hirsch really gets ahold of that stereotype and manages to put some additional layers in to make the guy not totally creepy, annoying, or unrelatable. The problem is that I never felt like I could get on his side. It might be because neither his backstory nor his medical revelation seems as effectively sympathetic as the writer may have hoped, or because his actions seem more motivated by selfish, psychopathic desires rather than to rid society of bad people. I think the ease with which he commits these acts right from the beginning makes his psychopathic nature eclipse any sense of his main motivation being justice. Whatever the case, Walden is definitely a complex character, just not a likable one.

I watched this movie in an effort to join in on comments at another site just for fun and got hooked instead. Like Roman J. Israel, Esq., starring Denzel Washington playing a legal savant with little else in the brain going for him, this movie reflects on the ranges of savants, from one too dim to be grown up, and one, the stenographer, too tried of injustice to allow it anymore. The story then delves into the ranges of vigilantism. When does it go too far? Is it always too far? But, the movie delivers this story with a lighthearted approach almost to the point of campiness, but managed to avoid it and give us a very satisfying ending. After the ending, have a discussion about how far you might be willing to go or would be willing to turn your head from or even condone. Well done.