This is an interesting movie that is really not your typical Hollywood blockbuster cinema flick. This movie is slow paced, it takes a lot of time concentrating on small thinks and a number of things are not comming from acting but are conveyed to you by narration coming from offstage; thought that our main character has, while he is on his journey into the wild, which most of the time he is doing just by himself. Nothing for the mainstream audience, but if you are open to a slow-paced movie that makes you think alot, and that shows you great imagery of the scenery, with in the beginning absolutely no indication to where this movie is actually going to go, you'll be in for an interesting jorney.

The end is however the most interesting part; it is only in the last minutes that you start realizing to where this movie is going to go, and as you get there, everything is going really fast and it kind of suprised me a lot. I especially like the final realisation, this is an enormously great message that was worth the journey and that actually raised my ratings by one point (otherwise I'd have ended up 7/10 because of the lengthy parts inbetween).

The second surprise I was in for (I did not know anything about this movie beforehand), was that it is actually based on true events - this actually happend, and in hindside you start believing that this is actually with hardly any fictionallisation. My girlfriend actually knew this beforhand as she read the novel, and she said that this is a great adaptation which means a lot because she is often critical when it comes to movie adaptations of books. So if you read the book and enjoyed it, you'll probably enjoy this movie as well.

Sean Penn adapts the adventures of Christopher McCandless, who left society behind to aimlessly roam the western United States, find himself and try his hand at a life off the land in the remote Alaskan wilderness. At first preachy and morose, there's a tipping point early in the picture where I couldn't help but feel something for McCandless and his misguided quest to subsist wholly on morals, philosophy and the kindness of strangers. Presented as a sort of messiah figure, this errant youth touches the lives of a broad range of individuals over the course of his travels, preaches the gospel of live-and-let-live and uncovers the difficulties associated with a tramp's lifestyle in a society so concerned with protecting its citizenry from themselves.

There's a lot to be learned from Christopher's path, both positive and negative, and Penn shies away from neither in this careful, convincing pseudo-documentary. It can be so enveloping at times that the sudden appearance of a recognizable actor or two along the way feels awkward and strange. A very solid effort with something to say, I only wonder if it may have been better served by a full cast of unknowns. Eddie Vedder's perfectly matched original soundtrack deserves a special mention.