Fast-Walking (1982)

Very well executed

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is a film that any fan of James Woods or good tongue-in-cheek prison movies will greatly enjoy. Woods plays Fast-Walking a corrupt pot smoking prison guard who runs a barnyard brothel for crop picking farm hands in his spare time. This film is filled with in-jokes with the late great Tim McIntire as Wasco one of the boss-inmates stealing every scene that he is in...he plays a huge prissy bad-ass who loves calling the shots behind bars. Kay Lenz is corrupt, deadly and absolutely drop dead naked gorgeous in this fun fast-moving picture. She seduces Woods and messes with his plan to help inmates escape from his jail. M. Emmet Walsh does his usual great character acting as Woods' prison guard boss and adds his usual subtle humor to his character. This film has some clever plot twists near the end and some violence but will still leave you smiling when the picture is over. Fast Walking is a wild ride and I highly recommend it, as it was released in 1982 I will confidently state that it is one of the 25 best films of the entire 1980s. Fast Walking can be a difficult film to locate but it is definitely worth the search...find this movie, watch it and enjoy it...asap.

I loved this movie, one of James Woods' best. I certainly agree with the other reviewer about Kay Lenz, the woman is ravishing. It has a gritty, sleazy feel to it that reminds me of "To Live and Die In L.A.".. .. it's realistic, in other words. Kay Lenz was striking in this movie, I thought she was about the sexiest woman alive for years after watching this. The guy that played WASCO was really good too, and lots of underground prison slang in the movie..it's got that real feel to it... It reminds me of the movie "Colors".. or "Miami Vice" .. and mirrors the drug scene in California, indeed, in America. It's a gray movie.. without any real heroes. Reminds me of real life!

One of the most exquisitely trashy -- and hence best -- seriocomic crime/prison movies to ever ooze onto celluloid. James Woods, that splendidly spacey, spastic, spindly stringbean who's turned sleazily engaging pent-up intensity into something of a modern science, is very much in his usual mondo nutzoid element as Frank "Fast Walking" Miniver, a lazy, dissolute, laid-back, don't-give-a-s**t-about-nothing, weed-toking, on the take Texas jail-house guard who's got his fingers in several filthy pies: he runs dope for cunning, calculating, double-dealing control freak top con Wasco (a magnificently lordly, mesmerizing, darkly charismatic characterization by the late, great Tim McIntire), helps Susan Tyrell run a south-of-the-border brothel, and has been hired by opposing racial factions to either protect or bump off powerful black civil rights leader Robert Hooks.The bang-up supporting cast smokes in no uncertain terms: a sensationally sassy'n'sexy Key Lenz as McIntire's fiery, fetching hot tramp main squeeze, M. Emmet Walsh, who scuzzes it up with his customary rip-snorting aplomb as the crooked chief of security; and a beautifully battered Timothy Carey as a foolishly obdurate elderly felon with exclusive dibs on the behind bars drug trade (McIntire's fabulously flamboyant spiel in which he explains to Carey how he's going to claim a monopoly on all the drug trafficking and bust it wide open by catering to the individual whims of each ethnic group serving time in the pokey is a real gem), plus colorful bits by such reliable thespians as Lance LeGault (as the ramrod captain of the guard who's itching to fire Woods), K. Callan, Sandy Ward (as the ineffectual warden) and the chronically geeky Sydney Lassick. Writer/director James B. Harris never makes a single misstep, tossing in enough seedy subplots, assorted sordid antics, startling plot twists, and smack dead on the money exploitation movie ingredients (wall-to-wall nudity, sex, illicit narcotics of every kind, seething racial tension, profanity-ridden dialog, lowbrow raunchy jokes -- y'know, the whole gnarly'n'nasty nine yards) to keep this delectably decadent doozy constantly entertaining throughout. Moreover, we've got Lalo Schifrin's flavorful jump band blues score, smashingly clear-eyed cinematography by King Baggott, a uniquely twisted sense of black-as-midnight goof-ball humor, and, natch, even a pervasively cynical and nihilistic edifying moral: If you put a whole bunch of ethically lacking scumballs together under one roof they'll get worse instead of better because they can take full advantage of the opportunity to feed off one another's moral baseness like a pack of leeches. Now, how could any fervent, hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool B-movie aficionado possibly pass this baby up? Well, the answer is you just can't, because this first-rate blithely amoral treat is quite simply the authentic funky article.

I will freely admit that my initial interest in this movie came from not from reading the book (there was a book?) but from the prospect of seeing the unbelievably attractive Kay Lenz frequently nude. How has she developed since 1973 and "Breezy"? (Very very well!) Nevertheless, the movie offered much more than that.James Wood is a prison guard and a hustler looking for money where he can make it, and he isn't fussy about how. So when he finds a way to score 50K by springing a (nice guy) black activist, he wants in. But..there is also a plot to kill the black activist and he finds himself involved in that too. Meanwhile, he gets involved with Kay Lenz,the gorgeous wife of his cousin, the con who is the brains behind the plot to kill the activist. This flick has twists,turns, and a surprising ending that you will NOT figure out 'till the last few minutes.Darn good movie. And Kay Lenz looks terrific! Why didn't Playboy grab her for a 10-page pictorial?