- guardian.co.uk,
- Monday January 14 2008 13:25 GMT
An absorbing, languidly enjoyable murder mystery. The central figure is only peripherally involved in the main story, but we see it through his eyes. He is Carter Page III, a gay senator's son whose main activity is the loose "job" of the title, squiring political wives to social events and more personal liaisons in Washington. As played by Woody Harrelson, he is a witty, well-tailored bewigged gossip, a flatterer and canasta partner to the rich and bored, whose husbands are elsewhere. Harrelson is never offscreen and proves again that on the rare occasions he gets the chance, he can carry a movie with ease. This is a buttoned-up, internalised part but it's nearly as good a performance as his Larry Flynt, a polar opposite character to Page with just a southern drawl in common.
Writer-director Paul Schrader's camera glides elegantly around the opulent apartments of society's upper level. In its concentration on textures and tailoring, The Walker has a good deal in common with American Gigolo, an early Schrader film about another man tangling with more powerful women and coming a cropper in the process. I was reminded too of that 1960s British high-society malingerer Stephen Ward as Harrelson, helping old friend Kristin Scott-Thomas out of a disastrous compromising position on her visit to a lover who is already dead, finds the society he has come to rely on closing ranks against him. "Nail a star, become a star," as Scott-Thomas puts it when the police get wind of her involvement in this murky, but well-lit world. The plot and motivations are a little fuzzy at times, but this is a quietly classy piece of work.
