Wild

“Wild” begins with novice hiker Cheryl Strayed at one of the lowest points during her three-month, 1,100-mile-long solo trek along the Pacific Crest Trail. She gingerly inspects her bloodied feet and prepares to pluck a battered nail from her big toe. While yanking it, she emits a primal scream of agony and causes one of her boots to tumble over a steep cliff. In frustration, she tosses its partner down the incline as well, and shrieks some colorful expletives for good measure.

We should rightfully be filled with concern for this traveler, all alone in the wilderness and sans appropriate footwear. Yet I knew she would be all right. Why? Because Reese Witherspoon, an actress with enough high-octane spunk to fuel an entire cheerleading squad as well as the football team, is playing her.

Witherspoon has always been adept at embodying extreme personalities who somehow manage to overcome whatever barriers are placed in their way. Whether it is the underestimated smarts of Elle Woods in “Legally Blonde” or the unstoppable ambition of Tracy Flick in “Election,” she is an expert at personifying perky pillars of strength who are just a wee bit scary. 

She is also a survivor, and not just on screen. Her career took a fall that rivaled Strayed’s wayward boot after she won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as country legend June Carter Cash in 2005’s “Walk the Line.” How she ended up in the likes of “Four Christmases” (which actually managed to collect a domestic gross of $120 million) and “How Do You Know” (an out-and-out gobbler courtesy of once-great James L. Brooks) is anyone’s guess. Mine would be that male-dominated mainstream Hollywood rarely feels the need to showcase women over 30 as the centerpiece of a movie, Academy Award or not.

But Witherspoon recently took matters into her own hands by procuring film projects for herself. She went after the rights to “Gone Girl” with gusto. Unfortunately, she ended up with only a producer credit instead of also starring after director David Fincher nixed the idea and went with Rosamund Pike instead. Me, I would have loved to have seen her variation on the schemer known as Amazing Amy.

But there was no way she was letting go of the lead role in “Wild,” based on Strayed’s 2012 best-selling memoir that recalls other self-induced trials of endurance such as “Eat Pray Love,” “127 Hours” and “Into the Wild.”  And while Witherspoon summons all her skills and then some to portray this lost soul on the path to recovery, I just could not completely buy her in this part.

She is fine, however, when comically lugging an unwieldy backpack and steadfastly sticking to her walking tour that begins in the Mojave Desert and ends at the Cascades. There are plenty of encounters, both welcome and unwelcome, along the way, including a rattlesnake, a curious fox, predatory men and surprisingly kind strangers. She sweats, swears, shivers and mutters her way through scorching heat and unseasonable snow, copes with dehydration and gobbles freeze-dried meals, all the while building up quite a stench in between rest stops.