There have been several abnormal walking statements or descriptions in (relatively) recent movies, and I’m wondering if I’m missing something. I walk quite a bit, and an 11 minute mile is really pushing it in terms of pace. 15 minutes per mile is a fast walk, 20 minutes per mile is a stroll … just to provide some numbers for comparison.
In Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise (as Reacher himself) says “There’s a bus station three miles away; I can walk there in 24 minutes.” That’s 8 minutes per mile. That’s a decent jogging pace. So, there’s the problem that this is simply a stupid statement. Then there’s the additional problem for people who’ve actually read the Lee Child books: Reacher walks a lot, and he’s not an idiot, so this isn’t something he’d ever say. Needless to say, it certainly isn’t in the book the movie was based on.
My bigger problem is that this line made it through however many writers, editors, actors, and so on, and nobody seems to have noticed that the math just doesn’t work.
Then we move on to The Book of Eli. This is quite a bit more complicated, as the man doing the walking is blind, so there’s some question about his ability to walk in one direction consistently. He does say he’s walking West, and that he’s led in that direction by God, but the watcher has to wonder about his ability to interpret God’s compass.
In any case, we’re told that he’s been walking for 30 years. Wikipedia has an article listing people who have walked across the US. Looking briefly over this list, it’s pretty clear that the walk has been done in three months by a number of people, and faster by many (though some of these were running at least some of the time as opposed to walking). Another guy actually did a TED talk about doing the walk in 8 months. Granted, none of these people were blind (as far as I know) and they weren’t walking through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. However, even a blind Denzel should have been able to go coast to coast fifteen times or so in thirty years. Call it 10 times to allow for apocalyptic issues – at some point, shouldn’t he have had cause to find a braille compass or something? That’s more blind faith than even a willing suspension of disbelief can support.
In reviews of the movie, many people mentioned other plot issues, many about the movie’s ending. I haven’t yet seen anybody mention the walking issue, though. It’s like people just think about a map and say, “Walk? That must take forever!”
So, I guess my bigger question is whether these people just don’t ever walk anywhere. I live in the city, and I walk everywhere. I’m within 2-3 miles of anywhere I go regularly, so it’s pretty easy to sustain a car-free lifestyle. I’ve read about plenty of people who do the same. I’m guessing, though, that not many of us are in the movie business.