Fantastic!

A lot of fun.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

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 was both a box office and critical failure upon its initial release, and even though it's not hard to see why (viewers expecting a historic drama played straight, by Cox of all directors, will be sorely disappointed), it certainly deserves to be rediscovered by a whole new audience. OK maybe Cox tries to be "cult" a little too hard for his own good, but that aside he pulls it off surprisingly well. Ed Harris is OK in the leading role but I would have LOVED to see Gary Oldman portray the semi-insane William Walker. If any role called for scenery consumption, it's this one. Watch it for the great Peckinpah-esquire shooting in slow motion, the amusing anachronisms (choppers, computers, Newsweek magazines, Coca-Cola bottles, Marlboros), the general air of absurdity and psychotronic charm, the comedic touches, the political commentary and the great cinematography. Walker is good exactly because it refuses to take itself overly serious.

Good? No. Accurate? Nah. Entertaining? Oh, yeah.I've misplaced my copy of Travels in Hyperreality, but I seem to remember that Umberto Eco described cult movies as those which, rather than presenting a seamless whole, can be dismantled; a viewer selects his or her own aspect or fragment to treasure and thus becomes a fan.Walker, in this sense, is the perfect cult movie. If you don't like the fractured story (and I mean that in a good way), you'll love the humor, or find a line of dialog to treasure, or dig the Joe Strummer soundtrack (or the casting, or the visual anachronisms that pop up too occasionally and too late to be anything but bizarre, or the twisted FUBARing of history, or the Peckinpah-esquire violence, or the amazing cinematography, or...).What this movie fails to do is bore. I've only seen it once, and I'm pretty sure a single viewing fails to plumb its depths. I mean that in a good way too.

I'm totally baffled by the way Alex Cox's 'Walker' has been ignored, vilified, criticised, ridiculed and slandered over the years. Maybe it's political message cuts too close to the bone, or maybe the mainstream movie critics are even more conservative and short sighted than you think. Maltin gives it a BOMB rating, and even the usually perceptive Ebert totally dismisses it. Forget them! Watch 'Walker' and make your own mind up. 'Walker' is certainly no masterpiece, it has many flaws and problems. It isn't subtle political satire (polemic?), it's often crude and ill advised. Some of the actors, especially Marlee Matlin and Gerrit Graham are under-used. However, it is FAR from a "bomb"! Cox is a passionate man, and any failings here are due to that passion. The movie is a cry for help for Nicaragua and its people, and draws parallels between America's involvement in the 19th century and the 1980s. This movie is clever, stupid, rough, accomplished, funny and tragic all at the same time. Ed Harris is marvellous in the title role, and many cult actors turn up in supporting roles. Cox is a Peckinpah devotee and some of that great director's influence can be seen on screen. But Cox is no carbon copy he's a true original. 'Repo Man' shows that, and anyone who enjoyed that or 'Sid And Nancy' should take a look at this, one of the most unjustly ignored movies of the 80s.