Walker (1987)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Such a frustrating disappointment

Admirable film.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

At first I was excited: Ed Harris in a Wm. Walker biopic! A deserving more-than-a-footnote of American history, and blessings to the producers who greenlit it!Well, I read up on it, and had a foreboding: The film would ravage its own intent, no?Started watching... mixed feelings. Starting to warm up. Would the director pull it off?: A gonzo treatment of the subject?In the end... I liked it. Glad I saw it. It makes a bold pronouncement on the filibustering mentality: A visionary presiding over a band of glory-seeking psychopaths, bankrolled by a money-glutted sociopath.And, of course, the film is a fantastic showcase for the power of a gifted actor: When the film seems about to teeter over the brink, Harris's presence casts rays of dramatic power that bind the disparate bits into something like a plausibly coherent whole.In other words, the director hoped to create art from a wild mess of scenario work by dint of sheer exuberant moxie. And I daresay he succeeds.Dug the anachronisms: They effectively invite us to connect this filibustering mentality to our times.Reality knocks my final score down a few notches. It _is_ a mess. While the wild, frenetic battle scenes evade an ordinary action/war- flick treatment, they do sometimes tend to hover in a kind of disconnected narrative void. Ca, c'est la charme, indeed. But it's still sometimes a bit much.Check it out!

Walker is an odd duck of a film, damned to the pits of hell by critics and followed by unemployment for director Alex Cox, this was the end of his short Hollywood career. The bizarre true story of Walker, the self appointed president of Nicaragua, is perfect material for an absurd comedy, but it's Cox's execution that gets in the way. Fittingly, Ed Harris as Walker is the only one who seems completely committed to this material and does a great job, but the rest of the film is so self conscious that it works against him. Cox turns things up to about an 11 out of 10 and has most of the cast act like goofy buffoons, adds annoying anachronisms and force feeds the comedy to us. If Cox just took a step back and didn't direct like he's always winking at the audience and played the film straight like Harris's performance, the comedy would work from the absurdity of Walker's exploits - not this exaggerated cartoon that he filmed. The film is featherweight for most of its running time until the last act, where Walker's dark side comes out and the film gains some gravitas. An end credits newsreel footage is both eye rolling social commentary and undeserving blunt force message, completely at odds to every frame of previous footage.

Visionary movie-making. I will not write any spoiler, so I can't describe the brilliant way Cox expresses his story with some mind-bending visual and verbal devices. Some might dismiss it as trickery, but I think of it as magical realism.William Walker was a real person and his "liberation" of Nicaragua did take place, roughly as shown in this movie. Cox and Wurlitzer took some major liberties with historic details- perhaps for narrative pace, budget reasons, or whatever. I read quite a lot about Walker and Nicaragua after seeing this movie and there's no distortion for ideological reasons.If you value originality, subtlety, honesty and an occasional slap in the face, see this movie. I envy first-time viewers.

It's not very often you get to watch a truly awful historical movie that is at the same time monumentally entertaining as a guilty pleasure...but here it is! I challenge any soul on this earth to even so much as make it through the first scene between Ed Harris and Peter Boyle where when Walker (Harris) asks Cornelius Vanderbilt (Boyle) if he's entitled to wear a naval uniform Boyle cranks, "..I'm entitled to do anything I want!!!" and then rips a sound-edited and enhanced fart so loud and obnoxious it wouldn't have made it into an "Airplane" movie. You'll rewind it ten times at least just to hear it!!! The rest of the movie is equally disastrous, but I'll write no more spoilers. Truly a gem. Ed Harris needn't carry himself so conceitedly in Hollywood given this skeleton in his closet.