Review of Walker (2012) by Hunter D — 25 Feb 2008

I'm a pretty big fan of Alex Cox's work, so I was naturally excited that I would get to see Walker when it finally was released in a lovely package by Criterion (I love the bonus feature where Cox reads the reviews for Walker, great stuff).

I had always heard that the only Cox movies that were worth a damn were the only two I'd seen, Repo-Man and Sid & Nancy. Well I'm a huge fan of both films, even the ladder despite its flaws, but I say I enjoyed this one even more.

Sure the movie might "think" it's too "clever" for its own good with all of its anachronisms, which I thought added to the already hallucinatory nature of the film, although I can see how it could take someone out of the movie.

I actually liked it most when they were sort of subtle when a guy uses a Zippo lighter to light a fuse on a powder keg, as opposed to having a car drive by or having politicians reading Newsweek magazine in the 1850's.

Still, it made the movie more fun than it already was. Ed Harris gave a really interesting performance, and the score by Joe Strummer, although a bit derivative of Dylan's score for Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid at times, has still stuck with me and really serviced the images I was seeing on screen.

Really this movie was an excellent historical farce about a little-known but very important figure in the history of American foreign policy (although, anachronisms aside, it's not completely accurate historically).