Following the desegregation of school zones in the greater Boston area in the early 1970s, a crisis developed between the Black students being placed in a public school system that was previously unavailable to them and the white students who really, really did not want people of color, whom they saw as sources or vessels of criminal activity, to disrupt their privileged lives. In theory, The Walk exposes exactly the path of shockingly recent Black and civil rights history that a certain legal theory (the one being debated in this current political climate) posits should be known by all. Instead of simply telling us that schools were desegregated, screenwriters Daniel Adams (who also directed) and George Powell intend to show us just how explosive and terrifying that process was.
The intent is admirable; the execution is far less so. Simply put, the filmmakers tell two stories, favoring the one that is infinitely less helpful in dramatizing this period of civil rights history. That would be the story of a white cop, his daughter, and their family’s place in a neighborhood run by a criminal organization. Generally speaking, there is barely any connection between this family’s troubles and the surrounding racial/political climate beyond the profession of the policeman, who strives to be an honorable man in spite of overwhelming external pressure. Bill Coughlin (Justin Chatwin) is not explicitly racist, proven more by his outrage when Kate (Katie Douglas), his daughter with Pat (Anastasiya Mitrunen), either casually or aggressively uses one of a number of racial epithets uttered by the characters here.
Everyone in this family certainly benefits from the systemic racism of both the police department and the criminal organization led by McLaughlin (Malcolm McDowell, amusingly not even attempting the wildly over-the-top Boston dialect of his co-stars), but neither Adams nor Powell seems particularly interested in exploring the dynamic between the crime family and the irrational white fear of desegregation that grips their homogeneously Caucasian neighborhood. Far too much of the story is dedicated to the internal conflict within the Coughlin family, especially when the racist attitudes of her peers inspire some horrible behavior in Kate, and within the crime family, which welcomes back its once-incarcerated main lieutenant Johnny Bunkley (Jeremy Piven), whom Bill helped to put away against the wishes of McLaughlin and his peers.
There is nothing new under the sun within that story, and so it falls upon the other, less prevalent half to give any of this material credence. Lamont Robbins (Terrence Howard) and his daughter Wendy (Lovie Simone) are accosted by a group of white teens, including Kate, while driving down the street. In an act of near-providential coincidence, the damage to their car interests Bill while the latter is on one of his usual patrols. The other ways in which Bill and Lamont’s story – as well as Wendy and Kate’s – collide are just as coincidental, to the point of being simply contrived and unbelievable. It all leads to a “peaceful demonstration” by white agitators, at which every single story thread, including Bill’s beef with Johnny, somehow comes to a conclusion.
The final sequence, in which a trip to the hospital finds most of the film’s main characters in the same place, is possibly the film’s strongest, mainly because it isn’t as sanctimonious as the claptrap that came before (ending on an image that calls into doubt the idealism of unity with those who have denied one’s personhood). By then, though, The Walk is too far gone to be saved.
Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment
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