Entertainment

There’s gotta be a ‘Way’

Let’s get this out of “The Way’’ first: it’s almost impossible to watch Emilio Estevez’s unexpectedly moving inspirational drama starring his father Martin Sheen, without thinking about Sheen’s self-destructive other son Charlie.

Charlie had nothing to do with this movie, as far as I know. But for me he hovers in the background of this story of an American opthamologist who decides to complete a spiritual quest begun by his dead son.

Played briefly in flashbacks and fantasy sequences by Estevez, the son has perished in an accident shortly after setting off on the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage that has lured millions of many faiths over the Pyrenees from France into Spain for centuries.

Arriving in France to claim the body of his estranged son, Sheen’s character impulsively decides to complete the journey, using his late son’s gear and scattering his ashes along the way, for reasons he can’t even articulate because of his grief.

He is slow to share his burden with the traveling companions he collects along this long, incredibly picturesque journey.

They include a portly, party-hearty young Dutchman (Yorick van Wageningen), an angry Canadian chain-smoker (Deborah Kara Unger) and a hard-drinking Irish travel writer (James Nesbitt) — all with motives of their own for the sometimes arduous journey.

There’s nothing startlingly original about Estevez’s screenplay, yet it has a modesty you seldom see when Hollywood tackles spiritual subjects. It doesn’t pour on the schmaltz, or self-congratulatingly condescend to foreigners the way that say, the dreadful “Eat Pray Love’’ did.

“The Way’’ also doesn’t overreach for significance, like Estevez’s last directorial effort, the all-star historical fiasco “Bobby.’’ Though slightly too long, it’s firmly grounded in emotional honesty by his father, who is simply terrific in his first feature-film lead in many years.

Still, it’s a beyond-bizarre coincidence that Sheen would end up toting a dead son’s ashes in a movie — just one week after the ashes of a character formerly played by his real son figured so prominently in the much-watched season premiere of “Two and a Half Men.’’