Communion (Phillipe Mora, 1989)
Walken plays: Whitley Strieber -
Friday 20 May 2016
Monday 16 May 2016
The Comfort of Strangers (1990)
The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader, 1990)
Walken plays: Robert - Congenial host, amateur photographer, patriarchal creepbag
Synopsis: The Comfort of Strangers gives you the sense of what it would be like to observe Travis Bickle from Schrader's Taxi Driver from the outside, only from the perspective of others just as unhappy and almost as weird, albeit more passable as normal. Penned by the truly impressive one-two punch of Atonement's Ian McEwan (novel) and Harold Pinter (screenplay), it's a haunting, eerie tale of lurid sexuality and obsession, the fallout of familial trauma, and the noxiously addictive nature thereof to bystanders who may not be as innocent as they seem. A young English couple, Mary and Colin (Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett), travel to Venice to patch up their listless relationship and contemplate marriage, but tension lies thicker than romance. But when they bump into Robert (Walken), a debonair but distinctly odd local, who takes them to his nearby bar for wine and conversation, things take a turn. After a drunken night of getting lost and sleeping in the street, their paths again cross with Robert, who insists on bringing them to his lavish Venetian mansion for rest and dinner. There, they meet Robert's Canadian wife Caroline (Helen Mirren), who immediately admits to watching them as they sleep, nude. The dinner is as unsettling as you'd expect, as Robert and Caroline grow subtly more predatorial...yet, once they leave, Mary and Colin are suddenly sexually ravenous for one another. Nor, in spite of the danger signals, can they seem to resist visiting Robert and Caroline one last time. The outcome is just as grotesquely disastrous as you'd expect...
Walken plays: Robert - Congenial host, amateur photographer, patriarchal creepbag
Synopsis: The Comfort of Strangers gives you the sense of what it would be like to observe Travis Bickle from Schrader's Taxi Driver from the outside, only from the perspective of others just as unhappy and almost as weird, albeit more passable as normal. Penned by the truly impressive one-two punch of Atonement's Ian McEwan (novel) and Harold Pinter (screenplay), it's a haunting, eerie tale of lurid sexuality and obsession, the fallout of familial trauma, and the noxiously addictive nature thereof to bystanders who may not be as innocent as they seem. A young English couple, Mary and Colin (Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett), travel to Venice to patch up their listless relationship and contemplate marriage, but tension lies thicker than romance. But when they bump into Robert (Walken), a debonair but distinctly odd local, who takes them to his nearby bar for wine and conversation, things take a turn. After a drunken night of getting lost and sleeping in the street, their paths again cross with Robert, who insists on bringing them to his lavish Venetian mansion for rest and dinner. There, they meet Robert's Canadian wife Caroline (Helen Mirren), who immediately admits to watching them as they sleep, nude. The dinner is as unsettling as you'd expect, as Robert and Caroline grow subtly more predatorial...yet, once they leave, Mary and Colin are suddenly sexually ravenous for one another. Nor, in spite of the danger signals, can they seem to resist visiting Robert and Caroline one last time. The outcome is just as grotesquely disastrous as you'd expect...
Click (2006)
Walken plays: Morty - The Angel of Death works at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (because Adam Sandler)
Synopsis:
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Sleepy Hollow (Tim Burton, 1999)
Synopsis:
Walken plays: The Hessian Horseman - fanged, snarling, but Headless no more! 
Synopsis:
Thursday 12 May 2016
Eddie the Eagle (2016)
Eddie the Eagle (Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Synopsis: Michael 'Eddie' Edwards (Taron Egerton) really really wants to compete in the Olympics. Everyone else - family, professionals, bystanders - really really doesn't want him to, and for good reason. And yet, in a story so daft it had to be true, our bespectacled hero stumbles and crashes his way through a succession of possible sports, before settling on ski jumping - one of the most dangerous - and, frankly, stupid - winter Olympic sports. Naturally, guided only by his plucky, borderline psychotic perseverance, and his reluctant, bedraggled, drunken coach (Hugh Jackman), Eddie fumbles his way into the 1988 Calgary Olympics, as his silly post-jump antics win the heart of his nation, and he accomplishes the most triumphant Olympic goal imaginable: managing to not kill himself. Director Fletcher pours on the cheese like there's no tomorrow, but it's a pleasantly chipper little tale in spite of its howlingly by-the-numbers execution. There are nods aplenty to Cool Runnings (which, amazingly, took place during the same Olympics that year, in what must have been the most batshit year for underdogs in Olympic history), and it's an appropriate tonal reference point, given some life through its gaggle of pump-up 80s tunes. And yes, there is a training montage set to Hall 'n Oates. You know you want it.
Walken's Warren Sharp is a glorified cameo, mostly restricted to images in old photographs and an autobiography book cover, as well as a spectacularly awkward excerpt of narration. Still, his presence is felt throughout - as Jackman's former coach, he casts an imposing spectre of discipline, finger waggling, and crushed dreams throughout. You wouldn't be surprised to see him cast (for the third time!) as the angel of death here, if the movie took any such illustrious artistic chances. By the time Sharp actually pops up in the flesh, in a fleeting, ominous TV interview, and in a gooey climactic emotional reconciliation locker room visit, it's pretty clear that the part coasts by on Walken's star identity, and that he doesn't have to do much other than show up. Still, he accentuates Eddie's post-jump emotional high well, capably conveying the struggle of a man fighting through years of emotion to finally make up with his prodigal son, and his heartfelt hug with Jackman is so cathartic it makes it all worth the while. He even works in the tiniest flourish of illustrious Walken weirdness by presumptuously offering to sign Eddie's copy of his autobiography. Cheeky bastard.
Wacky Walken dialogue: Only the most banal inspirational/foreboding dialogue here, but I do enjoy the fact that when he arrives in the locker room to congratulate Eddie for surviving his record highest jump, he only seems to want to talk about his own book.
DOES HE DANCE: Nope. Hell, he barely moves beyond a two-dimensional image.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 2/10 cowbells. Walken could have done this easy cameo in his sleep, but his unique ability to be simultaneously charming and hugely creepy does lend Sharp the appropriate gravitas. If anything, Hugh Jackman gets to shoulder a lot of the charismatic oddness we'd normally seek out Walken for here, including some spectacularly unconvincing drunk caterwauling, and simulating an orgasm in a close-up facing the camera, which he ends by nearly operatically bellowing "BO DEREK." In short, Walken's as pleasant as the movie itself, but watching Eddie the Eagle for him alone (as I did...) isn't that rewarding for any but the most tenaciously devoted Walken followers.
Walken plays: Warren Sharp - Savvy ski-jumper, crusty coach
Synopsis: Michael 'Eddie' Edwards (Taron Egerton) really really wants to compete in the Olympics. Everyone else - family, professionals, bystanders - really really doesn't want him to, and for good reason. And yet, in a story so daft it had to be true, our bespectacled hero stumbles and crashes his way through a succession of possible sports, before settling on ski jumping - one of the most dangerous - and, frankly, stupid - winter Olympic sports. Naturally, guided only by his plucky, borderline psychotic perseverance, and his reluctant, bedraggled, drunken coach (Hugh Jackman), Eddie fumbles his way into the 1988 Calgary Olympics, as his silly post-jump antics win the heart of his nation, and he accomplishes the most triumphant Olympic goal imaginable: managing to not kill himself. Director Fletcher pours on the cheese like there's no tomorrow, but it's a pleasantly chipper little tale in spite of its howlingly by-the-numbers execution. There are nods aplenty to Cool Runnings (which, amazingly, took place during the same Olympics that year, in what must have been the most batshit year for underdogs in Olympic history), and it's an appropriate tonal reference point, given some life through its gaggle of pump-up 80s tunes. And yes, there is a training montage set to Hall 'n Oates. You know you want it.
Walken's Warren Sharp is a glorified cameo, mostly restricted to images in old photographs and an autobiography book cover, as well as a spectacularly awkward excerpt of narration. Still, his presence is felt throughout - as Jackman's former coach, he casts an imposing spectre of discipline, finger waggling, and crushed dreams throughout. You wouldn't be surprised to see him cast (for the third time!) as the angel of death here, if the movie took any such illustrious artistic chances. By the time Sharp actually pops up in the flesh, in a fleeting, ominous TV interview, and in a gooey climactic emotional reconciliation locker room visit, it's pretty clear that the part coasts by on Walken's star identity, and that he doesn't have to do much other than show up. Still, he accentuates Eddie's post-jump emotional high well, capably conveying the struggle of a man fighting through years of emotion to finally make up with his prodigal son, and his heartfelt hug with Jackman is so cathartic it makes it all worth the while. He even works in the tiniest flourish of illustrious Walken weirdness by presumptuously offering to sign Eddie's copy of his autobiography. Cheeky bastard.
Wacky Walken dialogue: Only the most banal inspirational/foreboding dialogue here, but I do enjoy the fact that when he arrives in the locker room to congratulate Eddie for surviving his record highest jump, he only seems to want to talk about his own book.
DOES HE DANCE: Nope. Hell, he barely moves beyond a two-dimensional image.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 2/10 cowbells. Walken could have done this easy cameo in his sleep, but his unique ability to be simultaneously charming and hugely creepy does lend Sharp the appropriate gravitas. If anything, Hugh Jackman gets to shoulder a lot of the charismatic oddness we'd normally seek out Walken for here, including some spectacularly unconvincing drunk caterwauling, and simulating an orgasm in a close-up facing the camera, which he ends by nearly operatically bellowing "BO DEREK." In short, Walken's as pleasant as the movie itself, but watching Eddie the Eagle for him alone (as I did...) isn't that rewarding for any but the most tenaciously devoted Walken followers.
Monday 9 May 2016
At Close Range (1986)
At Close Range (James Foley, 1986)
Walken plays: Brad Whitewood Sr. - Tractor thief, Filicidal rapist, all-around awful person
Synopsis: The unholy love-child of The Godfather era's homespun crime drama and other 80s 'broken family, coming of age' ballads like Rumble Fish and Stand By Me, At Close Range is certainly one of the grimmer moments in Walken's career. Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) is already a low level hood, stewing around farmland Pennsylvania and nearly at the bursting point, before being abruptly reintroduced to his estranged criminal father, Brad Sr. (Walken). Brad Jr. is initially intoxicated by his father's lifestyle of used car hustling and larger-scale machinery theft. But, inevitably, second thoughts start to bubble up after his brother (Chris Penn) and girlfriend (Mary Stuart Masterson) are endangered after he's made accessory to a murder - not to mention that the FBI encroaching on the Whitewoods' action leads to Brad Sr. taking some pretty drastic steps in witness elimination. Fun fact: director James Foley went on to helm the stupendous Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992), and...um... the two sequels to 50 Shades of Grey. Womp womp.
Playing a part turned down by Robert De Niro for being "too dark" (yikes...), Walken's Brad Whitewood is truly bad news from the moment his moustache first inauspiciously struts onscreen. That said, Walken is ingenious enough to play the long game here, luring us, for over half the movie, into thinking that maybe, maybe, he isn't all that bad. Sure, he's a seedy hustler and perennial drinker, and there's that omnipresent murderous glint in his eye, particularly when cornered by a former gang member. His sparking interplay with 26 year-old Sean Penn, who's giving 110% as a scene partner, makes their scenes crackle with palpable tension. But gosh darn it, maybe, maybe, he does just want to bond with his sons through a bunch of criminal hijinx. Would that really be too much to ask for...?
Yes. It absolutely would. The second Whitewood's shadowy, Deep Throat-style informant (David Strathairn, in a shadowy cameo) lets him know that the FBI are on his tail, Walken's former ballsy charisma snaps away like a bear trap. Suddenly, we're watching him tearing around a corn field in his car, bellowing like a maniac. Then, when his jokey charisma returns, it's with an unmistakable edge of visceral threat. And then, before you can say 'How much Whitewood could a Whitewoodchuck chuck,' BOOM: he's in a hotel room vindictively raping his son's girlfriend. Next scene: BOOM - he's shot his younger son in cold blood, for fear of him informing to the FBI. Are we still laughing now?
I often refer to Walken as a performer rather than an actor (a term he uses himself, amidst a confession that he still sees himself as a dancer rather than an actor who's been faking it all these years). His unique style is unpredictable and eminently watchable, but always with a veneer of playful mediation - he may play creepy or intimidating, but there's always a Vaudevillian wink that, 'don't worry, it's all part of the act,' and there's a comfort to that. It's only in his most live wire performances - The Deer Hunter, and, yes, At Close Range - that he loses that, and fully commits to the immersive darkness of his legendary psychopaths. The year after Max Zorin guffawed while cheerfully gunning down his henchmen, here we have Walken disappearing into the skin of a real, gruesomely convincing villain. And he is terrifyingly convincing.
Wacky Walken dialogue: He gets a cracking monologue about coyotes, but it's a bit too loaded with the subtext of HE'S ABOUT TO MURDER HIS SON for the word 'wacky' to apply. A couple of his earlier lines blend zany with sinister a bit more seamlessly:
Overall Walken-o-meter: 8/10 cowbells. The definitive performance to turn to when justifying that, yes, Walken is sometime as terrifying as the aura he projects, At Close Range showcases his best emotional glissando from affable and charming to unbelievably sadistic. There's some of his usual weirdness, but no artifice here, so it bleeds into only make Whitewood seem all the more strung-out and scarily unpredictable. Still, terrific as he is, watching Walken cash in on the psychopathic aura he's cultivated throughout his career, sexual violence and all: well, let's just say that I don't wike it.
Walken plays: Brad Whitewood Sr. - Tractor thief, Filicidal rapist, all-around awful person
Synopsis: The unholy love-child of The Godfather era's homespun crime drama and other 80s 'broken family, coming of age' ballads like Rumble Fish and Stand By Me, At Close Range is certainly one of the grimmer moments in Walken's career. Brad Whitewood Jr. (Sean Penn) is already a low level hood, stewing around farmland Pennsylvania and nearly at the bursting point, before being abruptly reintroduced to his estranged criminal father, Brad Sr. (Walken). Brad Jr. is initially intoxicated by his father's lifestyle of used car hustling and larger-scale machinery theft. But, inevitably, second thoughts start to bubble up after his brother (Chris Penn) and girlfriend (Mary Stuart Masterson) are endangered after he's made accessory to a murder - not to mention that the FBI encroaching on the Whitewoods' action leads to Brad Sr. taking some pretty drastic steps in witness elimination. Fun fact: director James Foley went on to helm the stupendous Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992), and...um... the two sequels to 50 Shades of Grey. Womp womp.
Playing a part turned down by Robert De Niro for being "too dark" (yikes...), Walken's Brad Whitewood is truly bad news from the moment his moustache first inauspiciously struts onscreen. That said, Walken is ingenious enough to play the long game here, luring us, for over half the movie, into thinking that maybe, maybe, he isn't all that bad. Sure, he's a seedy hustler and perennial drinker, and there's that omnipresent murderous glint in his eye, particularly when cornered by a former gang member. His sparking interplay with 26 year-old Sean Penn, who's giving 110% as a scene partner, makes their scenes crackle with palpable tension. But gosh darn it, maybe, maybe, he does just want to bond with his sons through a bunch of criminal hijinx. Would that really be too much to ask for...?
 |
| Look at all of their happy father/son times! |
 |
| This kind of happiness could never end...right? |
Yes. It absolutely would. The second Whitewood's shadowy, Deep Throat-style informant (David Strathairn, in a shadowy cameo) lets him know that the FBI are on his tail, Walken's former ballsy charisma snaps away like a bear trap. Suddenly, we're watching him tearing around a corn field in his car, bellowing like a maniac. Then, when his jokey charisma returns, it's with an unmistakable edge of visceral threat. And then, before you can say 'How much Whitewood could a Whitewoodchuck chuck,' BOOM: he's in a hotel room vindictively raping his son's girlfriend. Next scene: BOOM - he's shot his younger son in cold blood, for fear of him informing to the FBI. Are we still laughing now?
I often refer to Walken as a performer rather than an actor (a term he uses himself, amidst a confession that he still sees himself as a dancer rather than an actor who's been faking it all these years). His unique style is unpredictable and eminently watchable, but always with a veneer of playful mediation - he may play creepy or intimidating, but there's always a Vaudevillian wink that, 'don't worry, it's all part of the act,' and there's a comfort to that. It's only in his most live wire performances - The Deer Hunter, and, yes, At Close Range - that he loses that, and fully commits to the immersive darkness of his legendary psychopaths. The year after Max Zorin guffawed while cheerfully gunning down his henchmen, here we have Walken disappearing into the skin of a real, gruesomely convincing villain. And he is terrifyingly convincing.
 |
| Little did Penn know that 'Brad Whitewood' was merely the most recent alias used by Magneto |
- "I gotta see something in you. I gotta see you got something here... between the legs... Then I'll give you a real present." [he's actually discussing giving his sons a gun here, but Walken's lingering gaze lets the innuendo fly as much as your wildest dreams. Colonel Angus, eat your... heart... out]
- [after his son calls, announcing he's just been shot in the face] "Get a woman. Get a life." Ouch.
Putting the combined weirdness of Walken and Crispin Glover into a single shot somehow didn't cause the film to erupt into a deluge of winged snails before erupting into flames
Overall Walken-o-meter: 8/10 cowbells. The definitive performance to turn to when justifying that, yes, Walken is sometime as terrifying as the aura he projects, At Close Range showcases his best emotional glissando from affable and charming to unbelievably sadistic. There's some of his usual weirdness, but no artifice here, so it bleeds into only make Whitewood seem all the more strung-out and scarily unpredictable. Still, terrific as he is, watching Walken cash in on the psychopathic aura he's cultivated throughout his career, sexual violence and all: well, let's just say that I don't wike it.
Gigli (2003)
Gigli (Martin Brest, 2003)
Walken plays: Detective Stanley Jacobellis -
Synopsis: Ah, Gigli - the film so legendarily, paradigm-shiftingly bad I wasn't sure if, approaching it, I should be filled with dread or reverence. If there's a 'Top 5 worst films' list that doesn't include it, the compiler is likely too afraid to take it in - or has, but the experience of getting through it has corroded their brain so much they've lost all memory of it.
Walken plays: Detective Stanley Jacobellis -
Wednesday 4 May 2016
America's Sweethearts (2001)
Walken plays: Hal Weidmann - demented director, arthouse maverick, fourth-wall-breaking Hollywood gonzo
Ahh, the early 2000s rom-com: the dictionary definition of problematic. It's hard to imagine this sordid farce being written by Billy Crystal, as there's nothing here even vaguely reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally's cleverly sweet pedigree (though we do get an "I'll have what he's having" nod. Classy, Billy). Instead, we traipse through a lampooning of tabloid celebrity culture and the PR spin doctors orchestrating it, which would sound promising if it wasn't so laboured and populated by a spectacular cast wasted playing dreary, offensive stereotypes whom it's never clear if we're supposed to find distastefully ludicrous or quirkily loveable (spoiler alert: we land on the former). Hollywood's most legendary on/offscreen couple (John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones) have a cataclysmic divorce once she starts an affair with her obnoxiously lisping Spanish co-star (Hank Azaria), and he...um...tries to crash into them with a motorcycle. The preening studio head (Stanley Tucci) tasks Crystal's PR guru and Zeta-Jones' sister/personal assistant (Julia Roberts) with reconciling the two for the press junket premiere of their final picture together. Naturally, all kinds of predictable, star-crossed-lovers drama ensues, and we get the distinct displeasures of Cusack working tirelessly to be so adorable we'd forget his domestic violence, Alan Arkin playing an Indian(??!) self-help guru, Azaria lisping "poothy boy" and defending his penis, and Roberts trotting out one of the most loathsome pining stereotypes ever, right down to a despicable 'I used to be fat, now pass the butter' routine. There's a lot of potential here, and Crystal gets some good zingers in ("I'm a paranoid schizophrenic - I'm my own entourage"), but the film itself is so relentlessly distasteful it's hard to stomach the few enjoyable bits - mostly montages from Cusack/Zeta-Jones' enjoyably hammy Hollywood romance dreck. 'Sweet' this ain't.
Never before has a shot of Walken been such a necessary tonic, and it's even better in that he basically exists here to take the piss out of the formulaic garbage spooling out around him. As the batty, heinously pretentious director of the final Cusack/Zeta-Jones fling, Walken brings all the wild eyes we could want. But, rather than careening over the top with artsy foppishness, he tempers his crazy with an amiable confidence that simultaneously makes him more of a dick but also more lovably removed from reality. He's only in two scenes - holding his passion project for ransom from Tucci and introducing it at the junket, but he's electrifying and hilarious in both - just take his insistent vulnerability when asking Tucci if he enjoyed the footage he sent him (the film's credits font). The real payoff is the climax, when the premiere reveals Weidmann has jettisoned all his filmed footage ("simply put, the script was shit") in lieu of an incendiary reality show style behind the scenes documentary chronicling the fragmentation of Zeta-Jones and Cusack on set. Walken spends the rest of the movie beaming and cackling gleefully in the face of all criticism, drinking in his public mockery of the industry's worst cliches. And, as climax to a film like this, the sardonic closure Walken grants couldn't be more satisfying. Now that's sweet.
Wacky Walken dialogue: Walken's loopy enough here that even his most mundane dialogue sounds wacky, but I'm a fan of his pontificating about his beloved film: "I weep just thinking about it [...] This is real life. The juice. The stink. The glory."
DOES HE DANCE: He does! He does! For some reason, we see Weidmann practicing a tap routine with Zeta-Jones in some kind of Nazi jazz club sequence. What's the context? Is he choreographing? Who cares! Dancing!
Overall Walken-o-meter: 8/10 cowbells. For a character so customarily out-of-this-world, Walken's antics feel reassuringly normal, if only because he's here to poke fun at how awful the rom-com surrounding him is. Whether Crystal intended him to function as a reflexive, sardonic meta-commentary is doubtful, but Walken's clearly in on the joke, and laughing alongside him as he watches the world burn is a deeper level of satisfying than I knew was possible.
Poolhall Junkies (2002)
Poolhall Junkies (Mars Callahan, 2002)
Walken plays: Mike - Kindly millionaire, gambling guru, corporate nonconformist
Walken and Eastwood must have had fun commiserating, as he also exists as a plot device: namely, 'Daddy Warbucks deus-ex-machina,' who cavalierly funds Johnny's ego as the plot calls for it. Still, he's jubilantly present here - or possibly just relieved he's not stuck in the Palminteri role for once - and sticks around for more scenes than you'd expect, typically livening up every single one. It may not be too much of a dramatic stretch for him, but the sheer air of fun he exudes whenever he or anyone nearby picks up a pool cue makes it pretty hard not to drink the koolaid and smell that sweat of the pool hall alongside him. And hey - what'dya know: turns out Walken's a damn good pool player himself, snapping back the balls, including one impossibly hard shot clearly done by him, without a stunt shooter (which imdb trivia reports he nailed on the first take, when the cameras weren't even supposed to be rolling). Just in case you doubted he was the coolest cat around.
Wacky Walken dialogue: His walk-in zinger is pretty tops: "What do you call a thousand lawyers buried up to their necks in sand? Not enough sand." Still, it's all about dem monologues here, and Callahan is wise enough to give Walken two back-to-back: "I'm a millionaire," where he calls the bluff on all bookie schmucks who can't put their money where their mouths are, and an ornately pump-up speech about lions playing the long game before going in for the kill. Great stuff.
DOES HE DANCE: No, but that bank shot is goddamn cool it easily makes up for it.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 7/10 cowbells. Here we have Walken at his most sparkling and relaxed, rather than his usual modes of zany, threatening, or tragic. Do we like this Walken? Oh yes. Yes we do indeed.
Walken plays: Mike - Kindly millionaire, gambling guru, corporate nonconformist
Synopsis: You wouldn't be wrong for mistaking Poolhall Junkies as a cocky vanity project for writer/director/star Gregory 'Mars' Callahan (who looks like Jason Lee and Casey Affleck had a cheerily obnoxious man-baby). Still, it's a slick, snappily shot (pun!) sports romp, and propelled by a spectacular funky score, and, with the help of some choice casting, more fun than it has any right to be. The story is a tale as old as time - crack shot Johnny (Callahan) is tired of hustling for mobstery backer Joe (Chazz Palminteri), so he tries to get out of the game to make it on his own (though he evidently still gets his kicks hustling fat cats at parties). But alas, he's lured back in for one last game once Joe hustles Johnny's brother (Michael Rosenbaum, better known as Smallville's Lex Luthor, who, with hair, looks eerily like Paul Rudd - or maybe I just couldn't stop fan-casting who I'd rather be watching) into debt and prison. At times, the writing is as high school as you'd expect (especially for Alison Eastwood - yes, Clint's daughter - who's here to play 'Male Love Interest Validation Device 101'), but Callahan keeps it energetic, and whenever the pool balls are racked and James Brown blares, it's top notch entertainment.
Walken and Eastwood must have had fun commiserating, as he also exists as a plot device: namely, 'Daddy Warbucks deus-ex-machina,' who cavalierly funds Johnny's ego as the plot calls for it. Still, he's jubilantly present here - or possibly just relieved he's not stuck in the Palminteri role for once - and sticks around for more scenes than you'd expect, typically livening up every single one. It may not be too much of a dramatic stretch for him, but the sheer air of fun he exudes whenever he or anyone nearby picks up a pool cue makes it pretty hard not to drink the koolaid and smell that sweat of the pool hall alongside him. And hey - what'dya know: turns out Walken's a damn good pool player himself, snapping back the balls, including one impossibly hard shot clearly done by him, without a stunt shooter (which imdb trivia reports he nailed on the first take, when the cameras weren't even supposed to be rolling). Just in case you doubted he was the coolest cat around.
Wacky Walken dialogue: His walk-in zinger is pretty tops: "What do you call a thousand lawyers buried up to their necks in sand? Not enough sand." Still, it's all about dem monologues here, and Callahan is wise enough to give Walken two back-to-back: "I'm a millionaire," where he calls the bluff on all bookie schmucks who can't put their money where their mouths are, and an ornately pump-up speech about lions playing the long game before going in for the kill. Great stuff.
DOES HE DANCE: No, but that bank shot is goddamn cool it easily makes up for it.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 7/10 cowbells. Here we have Walken at his most sparkling and relaxed, rather than his usual modes of zany, threatening, or tragic. Do we like this Walken? Oh yes. Yes we do indeed.
Suicide Kings (1997)
Suicide Kings (Peter O'Fallen, 1997)
Walken plays: Carlo Bartolucci, aka: 'Charlie Barret' - Principled mobster, amateur mind-reader, expert chair-sitter
Synopsis: Walken could have easily coasted out his career with splashy appearances in half-baked Tarantino knockoffs such as this if he hadn't been careful (or at least receptive to being excellent in other crappy knockoffs alike). Suicide Kings, or 'Baby Reservoir Dogs', as I started calling it in my head roughly five minutes in, is at least one of the better ones. It has the excitability and earnest self-importance of a pumped-up student film - slick opening credits, but a cheap, hazy filter throughout - as it proceeds through its tale of a gaggle of gambling yuppie friends (including Henry Thomas, aka the kid from E.T. that wasn't Drew Barrymore, The Boondock Saints' Sean Patrick Flanery, Johnny Galecki, aka Leonard from The Big Bang Theory playing essentially a whiny, twenty-something version of Newman from Seinfeld, and Jay Mohr, aka that guy who voiced Christopher Walken on The Simpsons) kidnapping Walken's retired mobster to use as counter-ransom for Thomas' sister who's also been kidnapped and held for ransom. Naturally, twists, turns, and hidden loyalties and agendas are revealed throughout, but it's all passably thought out enough to keep the attention. For all of the '90s yuppie braying, there are some good lines and moments sprinkled throughout, and the restricted setting, confining Walken to a chair and the yuppies to a house as they start to pick each other to pieces, is effective. There's also a subplot of Denis Leary playing Walken's right hand man hunting for Walken and pontificating about his $1500 stingray boots, which is good value in itself.
Nowadays, we'd invariably get Walken in the Leary role - a fun, scenery-chewing, inconsequential side character - but Suicide Kings is a perfect reminder of how well Walken owned the crime genre throughout the 90s. Strapped to a chair, Walken's charisma and powerful presence lords over all of the obnoxious whelps who fret around him. He's savvy enough to know that keeping things calm and offhand makes him all the more of a coiled threat - as Mohr points out, the last time he had one hand free, he nearly killed three of them. Walken's brief, practically frothing at the mouth freak-out when he realizes, doped up on painkillers, that they've cut off his finger with his esteemed ring attached to send as ransom, is all the proof we need of how rabidly dangerous he is.
If nothing else, for an actor who normally does so much with physicality, this is a nice reminder of how much Walken can do with words alone. Duct taped to a chair, his low, silky voice discerningly utters just the right thing at just the right time to plant seeds of doubt into all his captors, and get them ripping into each other, winning their trust all the while. Still, he's a man of odd principles. When Leary finally arrives to free him, you'd expect him to vindictively slaughter the lot of them for the indignation of his capture (hell, you practically hope for it), but instead he's oddly nice to them - going out of his way to affirm Galecki's wounded self-esteem, and following through with the rescue of the kidnapped sister, even pursuing the turncoat within his captors to the Caribbean to exert personal vengeance. It's hard to tell whether 'Charlie' does so out of a sense of 'heart of gold' principle and camaraderie with his abductors or irritated closure, but Walken playing the ambiguity to the hilt somehow makes his mobster all the more fascinating.
Wacky Walken dialogue: A few takers here:
Overall Walken-o-meter: 7/10 cowbells. In the era where Walken was still an instant bastion of respect rather than wacky self-parody, Suicide Kings is an excellent example of his ability to be genuinely, menacingly unpredictable - both insidiously threatening and unexpectedly likeable in the same breath. Bereft of physicality, he works the intimacy of the enclosed setting like nobody's business, and, like True Romance, he shows just how much he can do with some words and a chair. Namely: a shit-ton.
Walken plays: Carlo Bartolucci, aka: 'Charlie Barret' - Principled mobster, amateur mind-reader, expert chair-sitter
Synopsis: Walken could have easily coasted out his career with splashy appearances in half-baked Tarantino knockoffs such as this if he hadn't been careful (or at least receptive to being excellent in other crappy knockoffs alike). Suicide Kings, or 'Baby Reservoir Dogs', as I started calling it in my head roughly five minutes in, is at least one of the better ones. It has the excitability and earnest self-importance of a pumped-up student film - slick opening credits, but a cheap, hazy filter throughout - as it proceeds through its tale of a gaggle of gambling yuppie friends (including Henry Thomas, aka the kid from E.T. that wasn't Drew Barrymore, The Boondock Saints' Sean Patrick Flanery, Johnny Galecki, aka Leonard from The Big Bang Theory playing essentially a whiny, twenty-something version of Newman from Seinfeld, and Jay Mohr, aka that guy who voiced Christopher Walken on The Simpsons) kidnapping Walken's retired mobster to use as counter-ransom for Thomas' sister who's also been kidnapped and held for ransom. Naturally, twists, turns, and hidden loyalties and agendas are revealed throughout, but it's all passably thought out enough to keep the attention. For all of the '90s yuppie braying, there are some good lines and moments sprinkled throughout, and the restricted setting, confining Walken to a chair and the yuppies to a house as they start to pick each other to pieces, is effective. There's also a subplot of Denis Leary playing Walken's right hand man hunting for Walken and pontificating about his $1500 stingray boots, which is good value in itself.
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| The closest Walken ever got to a 'Last Supper'. Yes, including playing the angel Gabriel in The Prophecy. |
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| Dude - where's my finger? Oh. |
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| Carlo Bartolucci: most dangerous when clad in Panama hat |
- [Walken has to pee; the men have an argument over the mechanics of assisting him without letting him out of the chair, and specifically who will unzip his pants and help him] "Guys, it's my dick. I pick."
- "Guys, if I don't bleed to death soon, I'm gonna die of boredom. Why don't we kill time instead?"
- [Walken requests a drink; they bring him water instead] "Yeah. And maybe a crust of bread. And some nail shavings."
- [and finally, the patented monologue] "That phone call I got, it came from outside high walls and fancy gates; it comes from a place you know about maybe from the movies. But I come from out there, and everybody out there knows, everybody lies: cops lie, newspapers lie, parents lie. The one thing you can count on - word on the street... yeah, that's solid."
DOES HE DANCE: Yeah baby, yeah! We get a glorious flashback sequence, in which a 1970s-era Carlo, clad in a grim-reaper suit and fuck-awful wig breaks down like the best of them.
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| That's got to be at least 5 cowbells in itself. |
Monday 2 May 2016
Stand Up Guys (2012)
Stand Up Guys (Fisher Stevens, 2012)
Walken plays: Doc - geriatric hit man, schmaltzy painter, walking pharmacy
It's self-evident that Walken is the highlight here, but he looks so sleepy and vaguely embarrassed throughout that him occupying such a coveted leading role isn't even very enjoyable. He certainly nails the beaten down slump of a man living with the weight of a lifetime of regret through simple, fastidious daily rituals, and he offers a relaxed, affable chemistry playing off Pacino, but the film's asinine script doesn't befit the subtlety he's infused Doc with, sidelining him to the background more than befits the only person vaguely trying in the film. If nothing else, the film industry should have learned better than to keep making the vocally firearm-phobic Walken brandish guns - especially in his older age, he looks like he'd rather drop them like a dirty diaper than shoot anyone with them. He may look badass in the final shootout, but it's kind of adorable how unconvincingly violent he is.
Wacky Walken dialogue: Most other screenplays that subject Walken to this kind of embarrassment would at least have the decency to give him some juicy, eccentric lines to spout out, but decent is a foregone concept with Stand Up Guys. A couple of his old-man bumbles verge on endearing: when both Pacino AND Arkin are subsequently dumbfounded by the keyless ignition of the car they're stealing - yes, the film recycles the same non-gag twice - Walken merely shrugs, mumbling "It's computers..." Otherwise, the closest is their badass-cum-dumbass pump-up cry: Pacino crows "It's time to kick ass, or chew gum. And guess what?" Walken retorts: "I'm all out of gum". The dialogue is still awful, but it's kind of fun hearing Walken say the word "gum". I don't know. I'm stretching here...
DOES HE DANCE: He punctuates a couple of moments with some of his little back-and-forth shuffles, but that's about it. Honestly, any movie that makes me watch Al Pacino dance while Walken lurks uncomfortably at the sidelines has sealed its fate.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 3/10 cowbells. Walken failing to read the room, zone out and take the paycheque means that he's impressively invested in the scraps of emotional nuance he's allowed, but there's that's about all there is that's close to worthwhile in this tone-deaf waste of everyone's time. It might've been more fun if Walken and Pacino had played against type and traded roles, allowing Walken the campy, cocky bluster and Pacino the reserved regret, but god forbid this film exert any effort. Honestly, the hardest acting Walken and Pacino are tasked with is saying the name 'Claphands' with a straight face. Embarassing.
Walken plays: Doc - geriatric hit man, schmaltzy painter, walking pharmacy
Synopsis: Stand Up Guys is one of those despicably lazy, fill-in-the-blanks 'criminals with heart' capers that caters to the lowest common denominator so aggressively that you can't help but loathe it. Imagine any given cliché that could populate this tale of two aging hit men (Al Pacino & Christopher Walken) out for one last night on the town, and I guarantee it's there: hackneyed Viagra gags, inability to understand modern technology, leery sexual pursuits, reminiscing for 'the good ol' days', estranged family members, a botched confession, and, of course, a muted final blowout with ludicrously named uber-mobster Claphands (Mark Margolis) to show all the whippersnappers who's still got it. It's billed as a three-man show, but ol' buddy getaway driver Alan Arkin is only in the film for about 20 minutes, and may as well have been replaced by a cardboard cutout. Instead, director Fisher Stevens slots in countless exchanges where young, attractive women fawn over the aging leads to such an extent it's not even pervy, it's just kind of pathetic. The worst of the bunch is a lusty club scene with human cigarette Pacino, who has his creepy come-ons be reciprocated by a tender slow dance. Gross.
It's self-evident that Walken is the highlight here, but he looks so sleepy and vaguely embarrassed throughout that him occupying such a coveted leading role isn't even very enjoyable. He certainly nails the beaten down slump of a man living with the weight of a lifetime of regret through simple, fastidious daily rituals, and he offers a relaxed, affable chemistry playing off Pacino, but the film's asinine script doesn't befit the subtlety he's infused Doc with, sidelining him to the background more than befits the only person vaguely trying in the film. If nothing else, the film industry should have learned better than to keep making the vocally firearm-phobic Walken brandish guns - especially in his older age, he looks like he'd rather drop them like a dirty diaper than shoot anyone with them. He may look badass in the final shootout, but it's kind of adorable how unconvincingly violent he is.
Wacky Walken dialogue: Most other screenplays that subject Walken to this kind of embarrassment would at least have the decency to give him some juicy, eccentric lines to spout out, but decent is a foregone concept with Stand Up Guys. A couple of his old-man bumbles verge on endearing: when both Pacino AND Arkin are subsequently dumbfounded by the keyless ignition of the car they're stealing - yes, the film recycles the same non-gag twice - Walken merely shrugs, mumbling "It's computers..." Otherwise, the closest is their badass-cum-dumbass pump-up cry: Pacino crows "It's time to kick ass, or chew gum. And guess what?" Walken retorts: "I'm all out of gum". The dialogue is still awful, but it's kind of fun hearing Walken say the word "gum". I don't know. I'm stretching here...
DOES HE DANCE: He punctuates a couple of moments with some of his little back-and-forth shuffles, but that's about it. Honestly, any movie that makes me watch Al Pacino dance while Walken lurks uncomfortably at the sidelines has sealed its fate.
Overall Walken-o-meter: 3/10 cowbells. Walken failing to read the room, zone out and take the paycheque means that he's impressively invested in the scraps of emotional nuance he's allowed, but there's that's about all there is that's close to worthwhile in this tone-deaf waste of everyone's time. It might've been more fun if Walken and Pacino had played against type and traded roles, allowing Walken the campy, cocky bluster and Pacino the reserved regret, but god forbid this film exert any effort. Honestly, the hardest acting Walken and Pacino are tasked with is saying the name 'Claphands' with a straight face. Embarassing.
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| Candid reaction shots of the stars leaving the premiere of Stand Up Guys |
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