Walker

Alex Cox sure does have a thing for the strange and quirky. He directed Repo Man, which is a hugely popular cult fave, followed that a couple of years later with Sid and Nancy, another nihilistic cool film best taken with a few grains of salt (and maybe some vodka and heroin) and then a bit later again in the same decade he pulled Walker out of his clacker, which milks the same sense of offbeat style but will never be as highly regarded as the former two, especially by super-patriotic Americans, and especially not these days.

Again relying on faith that what they show me on television is the truth (yes, I’m a fool) this is the story of William Walker, who was sent to take over Nicaragua for a little while, seeing as how the natives weren’t doing a very good job. Well, they were doing fine actually, but that didn’t suit some Americans, you see.

Cornelius Vanderbilt (Peter Boyle) has business interests in Nicaragua, and problems with instability caused by an ongoing civil war prompts him to ask soldier of fortune/surgeon/lawyer/patriot William Walker (Ed Harris) "...to go down there and take over."

With the steely eyed determination he brings to all his roles, Harris portrays Walker as a man with a firm belief in the democratic American right to police the world for its own interests.

"It is the God-given right of the American people to dominate the Western hemisphere."

"Sir, your buttocks are superb, just like you claimed!"

Walker goes in with an assembled army of mercenaries, mayhem ensues, Walker becomes President of Nicaragua for two years, and thus is born the United States of America’s habit of going wherever it thinks it should, whenever it wants to, for what ever reason it likes, and enforcing its own superior patented brand of control over the people and the government.

As interesting as this is historically, somewhere along the line Cox loses me. I can’t decide for sure whether he’d just had enough with the pussyfooting around and decided he was going to openly give the finger to American policy and its makers, or he just ran out of ideas and needed to wrap things up fast and dramatically. But when you land a modern day chopper in a film set in the 1800s, you’re either f*cking nuts, or pissed off about something and trying to send a message.

"He's right Sir! You have the backside of a 20 year old!"

With the chopper, along with other anachronistic embellishments, he was quite possibly both nuts and pissed, but their use tends to come across as the sort of thing that some will interpret as genius and visionary, and others will simply respond with “Oh get the f*ck outta here, that’s just stupid.�

This alone makes it hard to definitively recommend as a film, because it’s these elements which will make you either love it or hate it, depending on your tolerances for excesses and artistic vision. Regardless of which camp you sit in, Walker is certainly unusual in itself, contains many solid and entertaining performances (not least from Peter Boyle and the ever effective Harris) and ends on a note that will linger with you for a while after the film is back on the shelf, which is more than many films can claim to do.

The compression deals well with whatever the film throws at it, with the scenes of frantic gunfights with soldiers running amok and smoke mixing with the kicked up dust rendered with supreme ease. Some close-ups exhibit fantastic definition and much better detail than is the norm, and the varying levels of grain (present mainly the darker interiors) add a character to the look that isn't out of place, but the picture can be a little poorly focussed at times, and with a decidedly soft look which plays up to its age.

Walker comes with an average sounding Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track, and the sound is flat and restricted in dynamic range. It does manage to convey the dialogue and effects reasonably well, and the score by the late Joe Strummer is always interesting, if a little jarring at times, which in itself suits it perfectly to Cox's vision. The few gun battles are active but lack impact, probably due as much to the original sound design in the source.

None.

A fairly unique treatment of an interesting and true story, but given the vision of Alex Cox it has a slant that guarantees it will be something a little different from the norm. This didn't make it a screaming sucess, but certainly helps it stand out from the crowd. It's a shame that the DVD comes as film only, as a commentary from Cox would have added greatly to understanding exactly what was going on in that brain of his and would have doubled the value of the package.