林中漫步 (A Walk in the Woods)

A Walk in the Woods is a good film.

Small-budged with some big-shot actors in, the film is simple, funny, and with a fresh light-hearted style long unseen since 911. Without a superhero defying the gravity or humiliating the rest of natural laws, nor a terrorist attack averted at the last second, nor any other far-reaching dramatization of human struggles that often end on a happy note, A Walk in the Woods simply tells a small and straightforward story of two men who become bored enough to try to finish Appalachian Trail by walking under an open sky. Of course, unsuccessfully.

After many heart-enlightening days, several mind-twisting nights, and a couple of unexpected and even dangerous incidents in between, the men on the trail, still lacking the otherwise self-satisfaction, have finally become more prudent than they were a long walk ago. They abort their expedition and go back to the pre-adventure life of each own with one thing in common, a happier heart with a lost-found friendship. One resumes his travel to go on about his wandering life all over the place, another returns to his wife who, after having failed to put a lid on her husband's desire for a walk of over 2,000 miles in the woods, casually parlays her beautiful British accent into the least demanding term in her negotiation as he is about to take off onto his doomed mission, "Good luck. Try not to die, OK?"

While having a caring and understanding wife and a bone-shattering accent echoing around is definitely a man's great lifetime achievement, he may also need a thousand other ways to settle on his imperfections with a happy heart.