Starring: Ken Takakura, Shinobu Terajima
Riding Alone For Thousand of Miles is a touching story about a man who goes to visit his estranged son who is dying and ends up on a journey to complete a project the son was working on when he became ill. Along the way, he meets a young orphan boy and feels a parental draw to him. His guilt over being a bad father to his actual son drives him to care for the young boy in a way he knows he should have to his own.
This movie pulls you in two ways, in that you feel sad for the man losing his son and a tug at the heartstrings over his bond with the young boy, but kind of not bad for him because he was not a good father to his own son. His attempt at making amends with his son falls short, but that does not stop him from pursuing the completion of his son's film. It seems to be a symbolic theme in Chinese film to have a course of action and fulfill it as if it were a debt to a greater power or karma. I can only assume it is taken from some sect of Chinese culture, though I admit to know nothing about that other than what I take from movies.
I'd put this in the same category as Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, though it wasn't quite at that level for me. I'll give this a 7/10.
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