Father and son fight for survival in effective thriller 'Walking Out'

The bonds between father and son are tested to the breaking point in “Walking Out,” a nail-biter of a survival drama.

David (Josh Wiggins), 14, flies up to Montana for a winter vacation with his dad, Cal (Matt Bomer), who is divorced from David’s mother. Cal has obtained a moose tag and plans to take David far into the mountains to track and shoot a trophy moose — much as Cal’s late father, Clyde (Bill Pullman), did when Cal was 14.

David complains, at first, about the rugged conditions of the trip. Soon, though, father and son are enjoying each other’s company, with Cal passing his outdoors knowledge along to his son. But a perilous situation, involving a mother bear and a discharged rifle, turns the trip into a life-or-death struggle to get back to civilization.

Writer-director brothers Alex and Andrew Smith (who collaborated on the 2002 high-school football drama “The Slaughter Rule”) are from Montana and capture the rugged beauty and frightening isolation of the place perfectly. They and the movie’s MVP, cinematographer Todd McMullen, also fashion gorgeous flashback sequences of young Cal (Alex Neustaedter) and Clyde in the outdoors.

The whole enterprise rests on the byplay between Wiggins (who starred in the boy-and-his-dog drama “Max”) and Bomer (whose résumé includes the series “White Collar” and an appearance in “Magic Mike”).

Wiggins channels David’s fear of disappointing his dad, and Bomer balances Cal’s expectations of his son with the memory of how he let down his father. The paired performances, set against the astonishing Montana backdrops, make “Walking Out” a riveting experience.