Father and son MARTIN SHEEN and EMILIO ESTEVEZ come together once again in a film project. It's THE WAY, directed by Estevez, in which Sheen plays Tom Avery, a Californian eye doctor whose views on life don't always coincide with those of his son Daniel - played by Estevez himself. Daniel believes in living life and so he abandons his studies to go travelling, to walk the Camino de Santiago, 800 miles over the Pyranees from France to the village in Spain where the bones of St James are believed to be buried.

But tragedy strikes. Daniel is accidentally killed on the walk and when Tom goes to France to identify his son's body and cremate it, instead of returning home to America, he decides to walk the Camino in honour of Daniel. It's a solo journey for him but somehow people keep attaching themselves to him, like overweight Dutchman Jost - YORICK VAN WAGENINGEN.

Soon they are joined by an emotionally fraught but overtly tough Canadian, DEBORAH KARA UNGER, and an Irishman with writer's block - JAMES NESBITT.

The scenery is beautiful, the acting, particularly from Sheen and van Wageningen is tops. It's a well-intentioned film, no doubt. But there is a naivete to the screenplay, a tendency towards cliché at times that disappoints. The first appearance of James Nesbitt's character is particularly grating, fortunately he settles down and Nesbitt is able to deliver his usual impressive performance. But despite moments when you want to pull back from the film, it is at others genuinely moving so that the sincerity of the piece overwhelms the sentimentality.

I wasn't sorry to go on this journey with the Sheen family and company.

ABC - At The Movies
Copyright ABC - At The Movies

The Way, written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father Martin Sheen in one of Sheen's best performances, depicts a spiritual journey. Words might scare off audiences out for cheap thrills. But open yourself up to this thoughtful, moving personal adventure and you’re in for a uniquely memorable experience. Sheen plays Tom Avery, a California ophthalmologist. Tom is also a widower long estranged from his only son, Daniel (Estevez), a wanderer Tom rejects for his lack of focus. When Tom learns that Daniel has died in a storm in the French Pyrenees, he leaves immediately to collect the body. Instead, he collects the truth about who his son was. Daniel had just started a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago, an 800-mile trek from the Pyrenees to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the burial place of St. James. But as we learn, the journey can be motivated by reasons outside a search for God. Even as Tom stops along the way to spread the ashes of his son (played Estevez in flashbacks), he is stubborn non-believer. But the loner eventually hooks up with three other pilgrims, a Dutchman (a splendidly funny Yorick van Wageningen) trying to drop weight, an emotionally wounded Canadian woman (Deborah Kara Unger), and a Irish writer (James Nesbitt) who tries to draw Tom out and record the story of father and son. Estevez keeps his touch light, with a minimum of pedantry. The Way is really a gift from this son to his father. Sheen, gradually revealing a man painfully getting reacquainted with long buried feelings, who gives the film its bruised heart.




Rolling Stone
Copyright Rolling Stone