After twelve years in prison, Walter arrives in an unnamed city, moves into a small apartment across the street from an elementary school, gets a job at a lumberyard, and mostly keeps to himself. A quiet, guarded man, Walter finds unexpected solace from Vickie, a tough-talking woman who promises not to judge him for his history. But Walter cannot escape his past. A convicted sex offender, Walter is warily eyed by his brother-in-law, shunned by his sister, lives in fear of being discovered at work, and is hounded by a suspicious local police officer, Detective Lucas. After befriending a young girl in a neighborhood park, Walter must also grapple with the terrible prospect of his own reawakened demons. [TRAILER]

STEVEN SNYDER'S REVIEW

I’m hesitant to disclose the nature of Walter’s (Kevin Bacon) crime. For those who want a pure moviegoing experience, read no further than the following paragraph.

“The Woodsman” is a film that doesn’t cut close to the bone, but through it, observing a convict reenter society with a balance of curiosity, disgust, sympathy and anger. It’s a film that doesn’t quite try to answer whether he is a good man or not, but acknowledges that maybe there are shades of good and bad that don’t quite fit our preconceived notions of decency and evil.

It is one of the more difficult films I have encountered in years, far more challenging than most will find comfortable. Walter is a child molester, who preyed upon nine to eleven year-olds, but claims he never hurt them. He now lives across from a school and counts the number of steps from his apartment to the school’s gate, but then tells his therapist he wants only to be normal.

Kevin Bacon plays this recovering predator as a man who is drowning within, floundering to grapple with the demons in his mind. He is quiet and remains to himself, going to work in a woodshop factory, eating his lunch alone, and returning home. The only people who reach out to him reflect the three sides of society.

Mary-Kay (Eve) is the gossipy company secretary, who is more interested in dirt on Walter than Walter himself. Vickie (Kyra Sedgwick) becomes Walter’s only source of happiness or love. She has been abused in the past, and can see past the surface details to the real heart and humanity buried within Walter’s timid, and scared face.

It is in Carlos (Benjamin Bratt), however, where the film really finds something to work with. The father to Walter’s niece, and husband to his sister who refuses to see Walter, Carlos shows up and has beers with the ex-con, chatting about his little girl’s birthday and telling Walter that his sister will see him when she’s ready. But then, as the movie goes on, Walter starts to see something in Carlos that he recognizes – a look on Carlos’ face that is a bit more than simply the affection of a loving father.

When he asks Carlos about it, the response is less than civil, Carlos horrified that Walter would dare imply the two are similar.

These are the conversations and the themes of this film, and we try, much like Walter, to find some semblance of normalcy amid it all. He is constantly torn in different directions, loved by Vickie, scrutinized routinely by a cop (Mos Def) who tells him he’s disgusting, and scowled at by those who, he believes, are not all that different from him. And Bacon’s performance is nothing short of brave, finding the overlap between self-disgust, hope, and fear that few actors today could portray convincingly.

“Woodsman,” despite its tendency to become a bit repetitive, is also a film that turns the tables on the audience. Living across from the grade school, Walter notices that a man is watching the kids, and one day takes a boy for a ride. He is disgusted by what he sees, and one of the film’s final moments seems to redeem his soul, as he takes matters into his own hands.

Ah, but here’s where it gets tricky. That man is just like Walter. What’s to say they aren’t the same person, in the same skin, with the same inner demons that both wish they could shed.

And regardless of how much the film has helped us to see past Walter’s rap sheet, our inner pleasure at seeing this second child molester destroyed shows that this subject is far more complex than any story, or film, could ever convey.

Walter says he just wants “to be okay.” The final moments of “The Woodsman” prove just how complicated and unnerving that journey truly is.

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