"We love traveling on it," says Estevez, who stopped - along with Sheen, Alexanian, and their small crew - to camp at the Rittenhouse Hotel last week. They've been on the road since late August, and Philadelphia is their 22d stop. "It's like this wonderful womb. We all climb inside, and there's this sense of security, but there's also this sense of camaraderie that we get out there."
The Way, which opened at the AMC Neshaminy, AMC Plymouth Meeting, and AMC Loews Cherry Hill this weekend (and expands to more theaters Friday), is a true father-son collaboration. Sheen stars as a California opthalmologist whose well-ordered life is upended when he receives news that his estranged son (Estevez) has died in a hiking accident.
Sheen's Tom flies to France to identify the body and arrange for the cremation. But instead of returning home, Tom decides to complete the trek his boy had begun: traversing the fabled Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, snaking from southwestern France through the Pyrenees and ending in Santiago, Spain. The route's 480 miles weave through cities and towns, and span diverse terrain. The pilgrims, or peregrinos, display their passports, their compostela, with pride. Innkeepers stamp the pages, marking the stages along the way.
In the film, Sheen's character meets up with a trio of fellow pilgrims: a portly Dutchman (Yorick van Wageningen), an Irish travel writer (James Nesbitt), and a Canadian divorcee (Deborah Kara Unger). In addition to the gear in their packs, each carries a personal load of woes. Like any good road movie, The Way is not about the destination - it's about the experience of getting there.
