Walker (1987)

Tagline: Before Rambo… Before Oliver North…

Curiosity: Joe Strummer wrote the score and played a bit part, although that hasn’t paid off in the past. That said, Rudy Wurlitzer wrote the script, and he touched up Two-Lane Blacktop.

Plot: William Walker (Ed Harris, whom I like a lot because of The Abyss and A History of Violence) is sent by businessman Cornelius Vanderbilt (Peter Boyle) to take over Nicaragua and set up trade routes. Initially a “good soldier” type, Walker becomes corrupted by the sudden, absolute power thrust upon him down south. With no one to oppose him, he sets himself up as president. But if Scarface taught me anything, it’s that sooner or later warlords piss off too many people.

Thoughts: Walker is the second best film by director Alex Cox, behind his debut Repo Man. The cast is significantly more talented and naturalistic than the one in Straight to Hell, released the same year. Harris gives a strong, stoic performance, showing just how easily we can become the villains in our own stories. His shift is so minute that you don’t realize just how off he is until shit gets real.

Unfortunately, the movie itself is just as imperceptible, rendering the first hour of its 94-minute running time dull and repetitive. People scream. Walker looks spiffy in his suit. Other people get pissed at Walker and his spiffy suit. Repeat. But when a rebellion rises up against Walker in the third act, Cox’s cinematography finally comes alive in an orgy of fire and Joe Strummer’s mellow Latin score. The characters besides Walker are interchangeable, but when they start getting mowed down, you still feel it all the same.

The same goes for Cox’s idiosyncratic placement of contemporary items like Marlboro cigarettes and machine guns in a story set in the mid-19th century. It’s largely distracting for the majority of the film, but it eventually pays off during the glorious ending. It’s supposed point out a connection between Walker’s dictatorship and the Reagan administration similar actions in Nicaragua during the ’80s, but until Cox spells it out, it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Still, the music is good and Harris turns in a solid performance. Walker feels like a waste of time most of the time, but that finally half-hour really is a whiz-bang experience.

Reflection: Now to locate a VHS copy I Hired a Contract Killer…