The Way: A family affair for Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez

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In Emilio Estevez's new movie, The Way, there's a potentially life-threatening scene that even a veteran stuntman refused to do, deeming it foolhardy and too dangerous.

So Estevez's dad, Martin Sheen, who stars in his eldest son's flick, gamely volunteered to do his own stunt, falling into raging rapids and narrowly grabbing hold of a bush, 100-metres short of a waterfall.

"We were all terrified that day," recalls Estevez, 49, who opted to use his father's ethnic birth name rather than his stage name. "I said to him, 'So now you want to be an action star at 70-years-old? [Sheen is actually 71.]We had a safety team there, and we had ropes, but I don't know if any of that would have helped. He was adamant he had to do that scene because he felt it was essential to his character's journey of spiritual self-awakening."

The Way stars Sheen as a tightly wound, affluent California doctor named Tom Avery who arrives in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, to collect the remains of his adventure-seeking son (Estevez) who died in a freak storm in the Pyrenees just as he was set to walk the 800-kilometre Camino de Santiago, an ancient Christian pilgrimage that has been made by millions.

Tom plans to return to Los Angeles with his son's ashes, and then impetuously decides to do the hike, which ends at the Spanish cathedral after which it's named, scattering his son's ashes along the way. "It's a story of loss and healing," explains Sheen, who was in Toronto recently with his son and producer David Alexanian to promote the film, which debuted in select Toronto theatres last Friday and opens in other Canadian cities Nov. 11.

"And it's his impromptu decision to make the journey that saves him," says Sheen. "So often in life, I find it's the things we don't plan – the things that simply happen to us – that make the biggest difference," he adds.

Tom begins the journey an out-of-shape, grieving curmudgeon who wants to do the Camino alone, pointedly avoiding his fellow pilgrims walking the roads. Despite his best reclusive efforts, however, he ends up getting chummy with three travellers – a chain-smoking Canadian (played by real-life Canadian Deborah Kara Unger), a chubby, gregarious Dutchman (Yorick Van Wageningen), and a chatty Irish author (James Nesbitt) who has writer's block.

"Tom is such a knucklehead," says Sheen, whose other, more infamous son is actor Charlie Sheen, formerly of Two and a Half Men. "He thinks he's got it in hand, but when he's on his own, he's a mess. He can't stand these other characters and keeps trying to get away from them. But eventually he sees himself in them. Their brokenness reflects his own. And he comes to embrace them, and embrace his own grief. And that's healing, isn't it?" asks Sheen, who is a devout Roman Catholic in real life, but plays a lapsed one in the film.

Estevez says he was inspired to write and direct this contemporary take on The Canterbury Tales after his father and Estevez's then 19-year-old son Taylor returned from a 2003 trip to Spain and the Camino. "My grandfather was born in the village of Galicia, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried. So I've always felt an affinity to Spain and my Spanish roots," says Estevez.

Shot in 2009 over 40 days, the film had a tight budget. Estevez and a crew of 50 donned hiking boots, carried heavy knapsacks, and walked roughly half the Camino, determined to capture the essence of the experience, where pilgrims – of all religious denominations – bond over courtyard meals and sleep – sometimes 50 in a room – on cots set up in churches and pensiones.

"We did it in sequence, starting in the Pyrenees and we travelled like pilgrims," says Estevez, who adds that Alexanian was ideally suited to produce The Way after his success directing the long-distance miniseries, Long Way Round and Long Way Down, that followed motorcycle enthusiasts Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman around the globe.

"We were very cognizant not to get in the way of anyone," says Alexanian. "We tapped people on the backs and sometimes asked them if they'd like to be in the film. But we wanted to be low impact, or no impact."

Sheen, who shot to fame as the troubled officer in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film Apocalypse Now, said he returned to the Catholic Church about 30 years ago. "I came back to a faith that I'd really missed," he says. "I'm practising and I'm going to continue practising. Until I get it right."

There is a line that's often quoted about the Camino de Santiago – you can start alone, but you never end alone. That phrase, adds Sheen, sums up what this father-son drama is all about.

"We're all looking for community and extended family. We're all looking to embrace ourselves exactly the way we are. This movie is about rediscovering your humanity – and by doing so, your spirituality."