If you ever want to watch a film where alcoholism, and more importantly, the twelve-step plan, are shown honestly, and in particular that plan, then this is the film for you.

Gus Van Sant is a very straightforward director who is not really about bells and whistles so from a purely technical point of view you have a well shot, well made, ‘clear’ for want of a better word, film. This allows the actors to act and by goodness are we not treated to some superb acting.

Normally you would be used to saying, oh Joaquin Phoenix is in this film, so there’s your ‘star’ but throughout the running time and in every scene, Jonah Hill blows him out of the water with a performance of a charismatic character that is in itself charismatic, funny, poignant and every other emotion node in the book. Simply he is brilliant and at the end of the film, even off-screen I cried about him. Superb. I cannot praise him enough.

Fair enough Joaquin Phoenix is about a micron behind him and Rooney Mara as the beautiful lovely gentle aircrew member is equally as good, and that in a role that could have been very much supporting and very much overshadowed. The supporting cast around these behemoths are very good too, Jack Black bookends the film and plays a more realistic version of his slobbish comedy version persona, he is superb too, so in the end you just have to say it is great film – all around.

Based on a real-life story this film is not mawkish, yet is definitely a tearjerker, it is funny but never disrespectful of the topic and neither does it shy away from the unpleasant side of all of us but neither does it moralise. We are all human beings clinging to this rock and we are flawed beyond belief. Come and see us.

No film is perfect, and you can get confused by Rooney Mara’s character, particularly at the start of the film and I suspect she is a composite character or entirely fictional. There is also perhaps too much jumping around on the timeline at the start of the story, but ‘pah’ I don’t care!

This is probably the best film I have seen in some time, and I am not shy is saying it gave me some insight into things that perhaps I never considered. Being a wheelchair after an accident, being drunk, and all the points in between. I loved it.

Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot is meaningful, funny, poignant, horrifying, sad, entertaining and everything else you want a film to be.

Actors at the top of the game, acting in an interesting story about a real-life lived, not necessarily in the right way. I recommend it.

Why wouldn’t I?