Valley Forge (1975)

Valley Forge (Fielder Cook, 1975)

Walken plays: Major Calvin - Hessian, military defector, connoisseur of chicken, horses, and brandy



Synopsis: It's a shame that, particularly in the wake of the recent rampant popularity of Hamilton, this 1970s TV movie adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's play (yup, eagle-eyed readers: the same guy who wrote Walken's debut, Barefoot in Athens!) has become so seemingly impossible to find (once again, I was only able to find Walken's scene on YouTube). Part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame series of TV specials on American history, Valley Forge details the struggles of the Continental Army encampment during the American Revolution at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, with the forces of Generals George Washington (Richard Basehart), William Howe (Harry Andrews), and [give it up for America's favourite fighting Frenchman] Lafayette (Victor Garber) striving to escape the conflict before perishing amidst a brutal winter. Like Barefoot in Athens, Valley Forge looks to be somewhat of a talky but intriguingly sardonic costume drama, keeping the politics and social commentary of the incident priority above any shoehorned-in drama (apparently, the film, to trim down to a 75 minute running time, entirely omitted the play's only female character... ah, patriarchy).



Walken, playing his first of two Hessian soldiers (this time he keeps his head on), easily livens up the proceedings as Major Calvin, who Washington attempts to lure into joining their forces. Didja know: the Hessians were a force of 30,000 German troops sent by the British to help bolster ranks in the American Revolution, so the legend of Sleepy Hollow inherently riffs on historical fact. BAM - HISTORY! At any rate, this is the earliest of his work I've found yet - if not quite to the extent of 1977's Annie Hall - that really feels like a 'Christopher Walken performance'. Apart from the inherent joy in seeing him cavort around in a delightfully shoddy period piece uniform and wig, here, he slyly chews scenery with a subtly weird charisma, brazenly stalling and playing with Washington for his own personal military advancement. Most notably, Walken's (admittably, fairly awful) attempt at a German accent shows him playing with pauses, enunciation and inflection in his earnestly misguided attempt to nail a European cadence. Could this be the dawn of THE Christopher Walken voice, which we've already established is at least a fairly conscious construction??? You heard it here first, folks.

Wacky Walken dialogue: Walken's preening performance makes even his most mundane dialogue feel wacky in an American Revolution framework, but two bits in his all-too-brief scene stand out. His closing remark, "You are most hospital hosts. The chicken...was lovely. So FAT!" is pretty amusing, but it's his opening bit that really hammers the bonkers button. "Lieutenant...uh... Cutting, showed me the stables. You're a very good guide, Lieutenant. Very good. The stables are very nice stables. Very nice." I severely doubt Walken clued in to the obvious sexual tension in his delivery, but, like his infamous (and uncannily similar) 'Colonel Angus' SNL sketch, this only makes it all the funnier.



DOES HE DANCE: Nope - at least until an extended directors cut shows us exactly what went on in those stables. Va-va-voom.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 6/10 cowbells. It's a shame that it's impossible to determine how much Walken's staginess contrasts with the rest of Valley Forge, but his preening, conniving, prone to repetition Major here is a subtly irreverent treat, flirting with, but not flying off the Walken handle. And yes - it's enough to make me wish that Colonel Angus had been greenlit for a feature film debut of straight Civil War euphemisms. Not for the first time.

$5 a Day (2008)

$5 a Day (Nigel Cole, 2008)
Walken plays: Nat Parker - Thrifty grifter, resourceful rascal, deadbeat yet delightful dad



Synopsis: Stop me if you've heard this one: a deadbeat dad and his troubled, estranged son are forced into a reluctant cross-country road trip, only to reconnect through a series of hilarious misadventures. Yep. Not only is the cliché already trod to death, but it's a road Walken himself had already gone down only four years prior with Around the Bend (this time subbing out Michael Caine for Alessandro Nivola, aka, 'the poor man's Sam Rockwell'... booo). Still, $5 a Day manages to circumvent its feeble premise with surprisingly disarming sweetness and charm aplenty. It even managing to raise a few unreserved laughs here and there, as Walken and Nivolo weave their 'Sweet 'N Low-mobile' through a series of free samples, promotions, time shares, idle theft, falsified birthdays, and a Sharon Stone cameo in the interests of keeping as low an economic footprint as possible (some of which I'm ashamed to admit I'm sorely tempted to try - that hotel room service theft gag looks mighty doable...) and to become, in Nat's words, "copacetic again". If anything, the film deserves some metatextual cudos for the astonishing amount of unabashed product placement it sneaks in, which likely substantiated its tiny indie budget. I'm serious - check out the deep focus in this shot and tell me you're not impressed with its clever callousness:

Walken redefines the term 'charming the pants off' his audience here. Namely, because he seems to spend roughly half the movie with his pants off...

Exhibit A: Open house exhibits are better done pantsless 

Exhibit B: this time with more swimming pool follies

In $5 a Day, he dusts off his 'charismatic loser dad' schtick he could probably do in his sleep by now. Still, he's having such an absolute ball throughout that it's hard not to share in his fun. It helps that, unlike other similar fare such as One More Time, twists and turns in the story reveal his Nat Parker to be more sympathetic and less of an absentee dick than initial impressions would have it. Walken appears to wholeheartedly buy into Nat's 'living large on someone else's dime' philosophy with gusto, while also, with no warning, discerningly locking down into almost panic attack levels of silent dread when Nat is confronted with questions his denial simply prevents him from answering. There are too many loveable moments to count here: Nat belligerently coaxing his son into sharing a wishbone with him, only to win the split at all costs; talking his way out of being caught (again, pantsless) of an open house viewing of the home he's been squatting in; politely attempting to rebuff aggressive seduction by Sharon Stone, only to enthusiastically succumb.

But one in particular stands out: camped out at the home of Sharon Stone's fellow con artist/former babysitter, Nivola finds Walken face-down in the pool. He cries out, leaps into the pool fully clothed, to try to rescue and resuscitate his father, only to find that his father was awake the whole time. Walken, instead, turns it into a boyish game of water-wrestling, and repeatedly headlocks and throws a flustered Nivola into the water while letting out battle cries like "Yabbo!!!" "Wahaaa!!!" It's no wonder that even Nivola seems to break his character's righteously indignant grumpiness strangely early, unable to keep a huge grin off his face throughout.

Wacky Walken Dialogue: He's got a few choice ones here, all too good not to share:

• "I'm sort of monkish. All I need is my bowl. I go from village to village, tapping my stick."
• "I slept like a polar bear!" 
• "Sears. Solid store. Good return policy." 
• [when caught pantsless by the realtor giving the open house tour] "The house is lovely, but my partner and I are looking for something more feng shui-ish." 

There's also a great scene (which was apparently improv'd!) where a tipsy Nivola explains that a question mark is a hieroglyph representing the ass of a cat walking away disapprovingly, which Walken attempts to uncover the mechanics of to an amusingly in-depth extent. 

"Does this look like a Q to you? How about now?"

DOES HE DANCE: So. Much. We've got it all: little jazz hand flourishes to punctuate points, an enthusiastic little 'get 'dem old bones moving again' wiggle, and a prolonged scene where Nat, attempting to blend in as a pharmaceuticals rep at a hotel conference, blows his cover by excessively flirting and dancing with the moderator's wife. Spectacular.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 8/10 cowbells. The film's broad comedy and inspirational strokes may not look like much on the surface, but it's brimming with indie sweetness, and thoroughly hard to dislike, cliché or not. Walken is its lynchpin, in a perfect cocktail of his most charismatic, wacky, sombre, cavorting, and remorseful leitmotifs that somehow blend into an individual that still feels fresh and heartfelt amidst the Walken tics. A low key but surprisingly enjoyable hidden gem worth dredging up amidst the copious dreck occupying the latter half of Walken's career, if only to see him firing on all four cylinders here.

The Dogs of War (1980)

The Dogs of War (John Irvin, 1980)
Walken plays: Jamie Shannon - Mercenary, opportunistic husband, unconvincing ornithologist

Synopsis: Revisiting Walken's earlier career, you really get a sense of how much later directors verged on plagiarising trying to capitalize on his early spark - 1991's McBain, namely, is nothing more than a functional remake of The Dogs of War, only more action-y and not as well thought-out. The Dogs of War is a rock-solid early take on the international mercenary-led political coup narrative before it became bastardized by a generation of pulpier Rambo knock-offs. Based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth, veteran of '70s spy-thrillers like The Day of the Jackal, there's more than a whiff of John le Carré here, as Walken's Jamie Shannon undertakes two operations into the (fictional)African republic of Zangaro, corrupt and dictator-led: one surveillance, and one military siege, all eventually revealed to be governed by British mining interests.



Director Irvin certainly isn't afraid to take his time here, devoting long stretches of film to the intricacies of Shannon's incursion, from his being held up at the airport by corrupt border guards, to his fastidious memorizing the Latin names of local birds to substantiate his cover as ornithologist. The film's action interrupts its magnetic, steady pacing in frantic bursts: the opening sequence, detailing a previous incursion, breathlessly thrusts the viewer into the chaotic fray. Midway through, Shannon is captured and brutally beaten by the Zangaro military, while his return with his strike team is a long time coming, but a spectacular maelstrom of pyrotechnics once it comes. Is it all worth it? We, like Shannon, are too bludgeoned by the senselessness of combat and political string-pulling by the end to be sure.


The Dogs of War is also crucial in illustrating how best to play Walken as a leading man: let him play the strong, silent type, and let his eerily riveting facial expressions provide the exposition. Slinking through the film with ruthless composure like an eerily doll-like Terminator, Walken's Shannon is perfectly bottled up - hard-edged professionalism as survival mechanism. It's probably the closest he's ever come to a conventional leading man performance - there's no goofiness here, just the occasional sarcastic one-liner or glint of pure madness in his eyes exposing at his torment and secret compassion for the lives of his strike team underneath - but he's ruthlessly believable, particularly when his ideals threaten to surpass his flinty composure, and he lashes out volcanically. There's a multifold catharsis that comes from Shannon finally getting to let loose with a grenade launcher in the final incursion on Zangaro, but his dead-eyed departure from the war zone suggests there is still no peace to be had. It's a remarkably subtle performance, and enough to make you miss the days when Walken was an actor foremost, and Christopher Walken the cult icon second.



Wacky Walken dialogue: It's more 'Cool Walken' than 'Wacky Walken', but we'll take it: after his beating and unceremonious release from his surveillance incursion in Zangaro, Shannon's physician lists off an accidentally alliterative list of the ailments he's contracted. Shannon snidely retorts, "Anything that starts with 'd' I didn't get?" Zing!

Does he dance: Nope. But he does get to blow up a military compound with a grenade launcher, which is arguably even more awesome in its own way.



Overall Walken-o-meter: 6/10 cowbells. This is Walken at his most restrained and fervently focused, and he's the perfect 'calm-like-a-bomb' centre for the rest of the film's chaos to revolve around. It's one of his best performances - certainly one of his most subtle - but there's no drinking game to be played with his Walken tics here. The film is worth checking out in its own right, but it's even more worthwhile as a study of Walken the performer, and his 'What If...' propensity to excel as straightforward leading man.

Barefoot in Athens (1966)

Barefoot in Athens (George Schaeffer, 1966)
Walken plays: Lamprocles - Son of Socrates, aspiring warrior, impassioned public speaker



Synopsis: This made-for-TV adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's play details the trial and final days of Socrates (Peter Ustinov) before his self-imposed death by hemlock poisoning. It's nearly impossible to find a full version of the film now, let alone a decent quality copy (and, truth be told, I only found a couple of brief scenes other than Walken's uploaded to YouTube), but it looks to be well worth watching to completion. Even in only the excerpts I glimpsed, the script cleverly teases out the intricacies of the Athenian political machinations and Socrates' idealistic (or belligerent) refusal to compromise play the game, and I'm sure the similarities to Jesus' trial by Pontius Pilate are hardly coincidental. There are some great, dryly funny moments of social critique (Socrates' family is advised to dress shabbily and rehearse their crying in advance of his trial to try to court public sympathy), and Ustinov's droll, blustery performance helps keep things lively and defuse the stiffness that plagues so many older period dramas.

The film's main talking point now is due to it being Walken's feature film debut (okay, not cinematic debut, but still). His Lamprocles (who sounds like a Pokémon), is Socrates' oldest son, and dutifully gets to tick off many of the requisite 'earnest son' boxes. He wants to go to war, but doesn't have the money. He tries to convince his father to preserve his life, values be damned. And he tries to rabble-rouse to win the approval of the masses to keep his father alive, to no avail. Cliché or not, baby-faced Walken (only 23 here!) nails the earnestness, while adding the slightest swagger, which is invaluable in keeping Lamprocles from falling flat. His accent is a bit wobbly throughout, but this is more cute than distracting. He's only in about five combined minutes of the movie, most of them sitting at the dinner table, but makes a strong impact while there. He's given a nice moment to shine in the trial scene, where he caves to existential despair in the midst of pleading for his father's life, and Walken's shift from wide-eyed fury to broken tears is truly moving.



Wacky Walken dialogue: No wacky dialogue to be found here, but his trial mini-monologue is pretty damn memorable: "If my father is found guilty, for listening to find the truth, then I give no allegiance anywhere! I am lost. And Athens is lost. And I can see only darkness." Chilling.

DOES HE DANCE: No dancing either. Probably good, as it's only a whistle away from transforming into a remount of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Wait - what am I talking about? That would be amazing! Dance, Walken! Dance, Ustinov! Dance!

Overall Walken-o-meter: 3/10 cowbells. Walken's debut filmic performance is solid, and his bit in the trial is genuinely excellent, but it's ultimately too insubstantial a part, and too early in his career, for him to work in his characteristic weirdness. If anything, it's most interesting to notice how traditionally theatrical his voice is throughout, inconsistent accent and all, drawing attention to how his modern charActerisTic inFLECtion is more of a construction than you'd think. It's an interesting watch, but one for the most dogged fans only.

Annie Hall (1977)

Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

Walken plays: Duane Hall - Doting brother, dubious driver




Synposis: Let's be clear: Woody Allen is an indisputably icky person, but he more or less singlehandedly revitalized the romantic comedy genre with Annie Hall, winning four Oscars for the most fresh and original tale of true love ne'er running smooth until When Harry Met Sally. Stuffed full of every neurotic New Yorker Allen stereotype imaginable, Annie Hall chronicles the clunky relationship between neurotic stand up comedian/mess Alvy Singer (Allen) and quirky, aspiring musician/mess Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), as their courtship takes them through tennis games, Ingmar Bergman marathons, fourth-wall breaching Marshall McLuhan cameos, contrasting internal monologues, drugs, analyst sessions, spider killing, and, of course, lobsters. It's all been over-quoted and riffed on to death by now, but there are some genuine bits of cinematic joy that hold up here, and Allen's insistence on credible characterization amidst the neurotic loser/manic pixie dream girl tropes helps it remain head and shoulders above the crowd.

People generally point to The Deer Hunter as the film that kick-started Walken's career as we know it, but it was really Annie Hall that put him on the map. In one of his patented two-scene bits, Walken helps Singer's first meeting with Annie's family become as surreal and creepy as possible (playing essentially a more subdued version of the troubled son that would vex his older self in Wedding Crashers). Duane Hall appears every inch the suave, spoiled rich boy when first introduced having dinner with the family, but it's after dinner, when he confronts Alvy with the dark confession that he is often consumed with the dark desire to plow headlong into oncoming traffic, that Walken really comes alive. Lurking in the dark with a sinister conviction in his eyes, Walken makes Duane all the more disturbingly funny through his unnerving calm, as if talking through the sensorial details of the anticipated explosion is the most matter-of-fact thing in the world. His aura is so fundamentally off-putting that Allen's retort, "I have to go now, Duane - I have to return to the planet Earth" is spot on. Then: punchline. Guess who drives Alvy and Annie to the airport after dinner? Perfection.

Wacky Walken dialogue: His entire monologue ("I can anticipate the explosion, the sound of shattering glass, the flames rising out of the flowing gasoline") is a classic, but it's his opening remark that does me in: "I tell you this because, as an artist, I think you'll understand."

DOES HE DANCE: Nope - but if he's this fucked up about driving, I'd hate to see what letting him loose on a dance floor would uncork.



Overall Walken-o-meter: 9/10 cowbells. This is seminal Walken, and a perfectly played taste of the madness the rest of his career would unleash. He's one of the absolute highlights of one of the most revered films of the decade, and his eerie, hilarious tranquility throughout his murderous monologue makes it one of his best.

Puss in Boots (1988)

Puss in Boots (Eugene Marner, 1988)
Walken plays: Puss - boot enthusiast, royal sleight-of-hand-er, happy cat

Synopsis: Did this movie even happen? Or was it a delirious, hallucinogenic fever dream? It's hard to tell the difference sometimes. Puss in Boots, part of the Canon series of straight-to-VHS live action fairy tales, is sweetness personified. Still, it's so abrasively shoddy and weird that, watching it, it's easy to worry that you're lapsing out of consciousness and sobriety, much like the superimposed shapeshifting ogre and cat who flicker in front of our eyes like oh so many acid flashbacks. The story - the age-old children's lark about a talking cat who, upon being gifted a pair of boots, helps elevate his master's social status from country worker to faux-royalty - is so stiff that it recalls a Coen Brothers parody, with the cheap looking costumes, atrocious cast, and weak musical numbers doing it no favours. 




To say that Walken's Puss makes the movie is the understatement of his career. His flamboyant, gallant charisma, jaunty walk, and flawless song and dance skills bring effervescent life to literature's most famous trickster cat, while his uniquely syncopated delivery makes every line he speaks garrulously hilarious (whether it's always intentional is up for discussion). Even his springy, fidgety physicality uncannily embodies feline twitchiness. Cheerily oblivious to the disaster he's surrounded by, he's clearly having such a ball that it's hard not to share in his fun, and it's solely because of him that the film deserves even a whisper of recognition henceforth. 

Wacky Walken dialogue: Walken isn't given many wacky lines here - the goofiness is all in his performance juxtaposed with the awful backdrop. It's kind of adorable when he falls over, upon trying to walk as a human(?) for the first time, and sheepishly declares, "Two feet - they're not as easy as I thought they'd be, Master," and "Nobody does court DANCING anymore! Don't TELL me you don't know any country dances!" is made hysterical from his delivery alone, but, quite honestly, just hearing him bray out "Give me some BOOTS!" is probably the film's biggest laugh. 

DOES HE DANCE: Oh goodness, does he. Chances are, if you've seen any 'Christopher Walken dances!' compilation, at least a third of it is taken from his glorious, table vaulting moves as he breaks it down here. If Puss in Boots has any legacy, it's giving Walken an excuse to cut the rug in his prime. But why waste time with mere words: here are some of his grooviest moves here, in glorious gif form.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 10/10 cowbells. These boots were made for Walken. Everything about his work here is pristinely, loveably batshit: his titanic charm as he acts his way out of the atrocious film he's ensconced in, his wholehearted commitment to the physicality of a cat (that's a wonderful sentence I never assumed I'd write), his out-of-this-world singing and dancing, and the fact that such a surreal acid trip of a film elevates rather than blemishes his career status. Meow. 

Antz (1998)

Antz (Eric Darnell & Tim Johnson, 1998)
Walken plays: Colonel Cutter - flying ant, regimented clock watcher, redemptive dissident

 

Synopsis: Antz is fundamentally a product of its time - if only for the reason that no one would ever let Woody Allen within a hundred miles of a kids film again. Here, in the film that butted mandibles with Disney's A Bug's Life (also 1998) for the late-90s anthropomorphized ants market, he's able to meld his neurotic intellectual schlub persona well into a clever little tale that sneaks subversive themes of individualism and Marxist anti-authoritarian revolt into a children's animation. It's one of the first animated features to play off celebrity voice casting, and it holds up: the humour still bristles, the pace is perfectly bouncy, and the animation is still excellent, particularly the fun with size perspective in the world above ground and the termite massacre, which is still one of the most horrifying sequences ever to make its way into a kid's movie.

Allen's Z is a worker ant who, after trading places with his behemoth soldier friend (Sylvester Stallone) to flirt with the colony's Princess Bala (Sharon Stone), is swept up into a military campaign on the "war on termites" by the corrupt General Mandible (Gene Hackman) who is making a political coup for leadership of the colony. Instead, Z survives, is championed as a war hero, accidentally absconds with the princess, and sets out for the mysterious sanctuary of Insectopia.



 Walken's Colonel Cutter, second-in-command to Mandible, doesn't factor in hugely. He's largely distinguishable as 'the one with the wings' (although it is eerie how Walken's distinctive gaunt cheekbones are replicated by Cutter's facial animation), and his character function is largely providing sinister support for Hackman's evil barking. It's commendable how much Walken disappears into a character who would recognize the power in quiet, calculated string-pulling from the background, but it's ultimately a bit of a thankless role for an actor of his talents. But hey - at least he gets a character arc this time around, as Cutter recognizes how Mandible's genocide of the mutineering is not, after all, "for the good of the colony," and decks him during the climax. 

Wacky Walken Dialogue: Cutter doesn't really say much period, but there are a couple that stand out. When Mandible asks Cutter to clear room in his schedule for a conversation with Princess Bala, Cutter dutifully replies, "In fact, sir, there is time right now for a personal moment. We're a few seconds ahead of schedule," only to quickly interrupt the ensuing interaction with "Time stands still for no ant." Later, when he arrives at Insectopia -  a hippie colony in a garbage dump - he derisively sniffs "This is... bohemian," which is also pretty good.

DOES HE DANCE: Not even a little bit. He flies, which is something, but doesn't really scratch the Walken itch.



Overall Walken-o-meter: 2/10 cowbells. Antz is a quality and thoroughly entertaining animated feature that stands the test of time, but it's not a film to watch for Christopher Walken, plain and simple. This is not to say that Walken detracts at all, as his sinister hiss here is perfect for Cutter. Still, for an actor who has legendarily embodied a cat and gigantic ape, his turn as an ant is one of his least distinctive and memorable in terms of star identity.

The Power of Few (2013)

The Power of Few (Leone Marucci, 2013)

Walken plays: John Simcheck, Channel 4 news (aka: Doke) - former newscaster, paranoiac zealot, fourth wall-breaker

Synopsis: What's really going on in this time-twisting, pseudo-philosophical urban crime parable that wants to be 'Tarantino does Run, Lola, Run' so badly it hurts? Your guess is as good as mine. Essentially, the multiple, Vantage Point-style (I won't invite the comparison to the incomparabily superior Rashômon) overlapping storylines all revolve around the theft of the Shroud of Turin (Jesus' burial shroud) from the Vatican, and how the FBI(?) agents pursuing it (Christian Slater & Nicky Whelan) stumble across a bundle of eccentric characters, including the manic pixie dream girl bike messenger obliviously transporting it (Q'orianka Kilcher), a vengeful thug out for blood (Anthony Anderson), and a teen thieving his brother's baby food (Devon Gearhart)... all of whose lives are subtly, positively altered by the presence of Few (Tione Johnson), who comes with her own murky theological connotations. Phew!

It sounds interesting, and Marucci's confident, stylish filmmaking lends some cool soundtrack/cinematography moments, but his script is madder than a sackful of ferrets, and more concerned with sounding hip at all costs (it doesn't) than answering any of the film's logistical questions, let alone much sense of theme or cohesion. It's not an unpleasant watch, and it threatens to raise some interesting, albeit unoriginal questions about fate, spirituality, and so on. Still, Marucci's monolithic dialogue is so thoroughly alienating that it's nigh impossible to connect with any of the characters for more than fleeting moments, making it a lively but overlong (at only 96 minutes...), confusing parable it's hard to find a point to.



Walken's "Doke" is easily the ensemble's most enjoyable inclusion (duhrr), but also its most cryptic (also duhrr). Hanging out with fellow derelict Brown (In Bruges' Jordan Prentice), Walken is garbed like a homeless Silent Bob, spouts almost incomprehensible hepcat dialogue, and exhibits a penchant to narrate the events he's witnessing like a TV newscaster, which leads to a couple of amusing "Video from Doke's head" fantasy flash-forwards, Run, Lola, Run style, of the kind of botched crimes he could get up to with a purloined gun. We later find out the twist that he...um...used to be a TV newscaster, until a mysterious phone call informing him that the theft of the Shroud of Turin would result in Jesus' resurrection by cloning (h'okay...), and his inability to report it led to a spiral of self-destruction resulting in his vagrancy. So: he's basically an exposition dump, then? Essentially. But Walken is game to embrace his character's weird extremes and delusional pathos, and his teary-eyed monologue explaining his fateful call is a bizarrely riveting and affecting as any he's done. He's no weirder than the film surrounding him, but is far more fun, which counts for a lot.

 

Wacky Walken dialogue: Apart from his rather excellent Christ-cloning monologue, Doke's philosophical rambling leads to some choice Walken bits:

• "Brown, I tell ya - you gotta start listening to what people don't say. It's the best way to stay focused."
• "They're gonna clone the big guy!"
• "Ours is the age of machines that think, and suspicious people who try to"
• "You're an observant little fellow who stopped to have a think. My advice to you: don't forget to start up again."
• "Gangs don't need guns. They're gangs because they already have guns."

 

DOES HE DANCE: Yes! It's only a brief little arm sway from side to side as he and Brown swagger down the street, but the twinkle in Walken's eye makes it unbelievably worthwhile.

 


Overall Walken-o-meter: 7/10 cowbells. Walken's weirdness here is more appropriate than usual, so it's hardly his fault that his he melds into the murkiness of the film surrounding him and fails to stand out as much as usual, despite his laundry list of quirky trappings. It's fun, but not as substantial or memorable as many of his other oddballs.

 

One More Time (2015)

One More Time (Robert Edwards, 2015)
Walken plays: Paul Lombard - crooner, philanderer, Flaming Lips opener

Synopsis: Spoiler alert: being the child of a famous entertainer is hard. Yes, really! But just in case that hadn't already sunk in, writer/director Robert Edwards is here to trot out a stale parable of broken family, mid(late)-life crisis comebacks, and the rippling toxicity of celebrity, made more pleasant thanks to its capable cast. Here, Jude (Amber Heard), who is just as sick of Beatles jokes as she is being in the shadow of her washed up crooner father (Walken), is forced to temporarily bunk in his 'slum of the Hamptons' as she sorts out her train wreck of a life. Meanwhile, Walken's Paul pens a new tune, "When I Live My Life Over Again," and uses it as a springboard for his latest comeback du-jour, which sparks its own waves of drama.

One More Time is the kind of old school indie drama that employs adjectives like 'flawed,' 'real,' and 'complex' to defend characters when they're really all just synonyms for dislikeable. It brings to mind the fact that it's kind of fresh to see Walken play someone genuinely dickish rather than his usual loveable/evil oddballs, and he's careful not to downplay Paul's foul, selfish life decisions, and shitty parenthood. But, in counterbalancing them with his indomitable charisma and hard-etched pathos, he here offers a deceptively mature and insightful character study into why we continue to tolerate such sleazebags, let alone elevating them to the status of matinée idols. It goes without saying that his Sinatra-style singing is spectacular, and seeing a bunch of kitschy album covers of Paul's past works and their schizophrenic genre-shifting through the years is good for a lark as well, so the film is well worth it in that respect if nothing else.

"Wait...You're not Kristen Stewart. So why have you been responding to 'Bella' this whole time?!"

Wacky Walken dialogue: Considering how uninspired the script is as a whole, the quota of Wacky Walken-isms is off the charts. Here are some of his best:

• "Starshadow's a wonderful name! What if you'd been born during my jazz period? You would've ended up named 'Mingus.'"
• "If I'd been born in Hindustan, I'd reincarnate like the Hindus can" (this opening lyric to his "When I Live My Life Over Again" song is played entirely straight, which only makes it all the more delightfully ludicrous)
• "Keep me company! I'll be dead soon!"
• At one point, getting stoned on the couch watching old reruns of his televised concerns, Paul gets giggly, and keeps repeating the name 'Kim Jong-Il' as if it's the funniest thing in the world, which is worth its weight in gold.
• "Corrine, I don't have time for two batshit daughters right now; you're supposed to be the stable one."
• And finally: "Stupid clay pigeons." (Paul is grumpy that the inanimate objects during skeet shooting are so inconveniently hard to hit)

"Hunting deer was so much easier than hunting these damn inanimate objects"

DOES HE DANCE: Yup! It's just a lil' Sinatra-esq stage shuffle during his song numbers, but it counts.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 5/10 cowbells. Walken is, as always, fantastic, and he's commendably committed to imbuing Paul with oodles of nuance and sympathetic pathos amidst his unabashed assholedom. And hey - any chance to get him singing and dancing is always infallibly worth it. It's a shame the script can't quite keep up with him, or, with some tidying (and a better scene partner than the mumbly Heard), this could easily have built into a solid Oscar bid. Instead, it's a pleasantly generic bucket of interpersonal drama with some choice moments glittering through, but still essentially one for the fans.

Romance & Cigarettes (2005)

Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005)
Walken plays: Cousin Bo - florist, cuckold, Tom Jones harmonizer



Synopsis: Romance & Cigarettes is exactly the kind of bonkers film you'd expect to see directed by John Turturro method acting as his iconic Jesus from The Big Lebowski. Except, thankfully, with fewer eight year olds, dude. It's outrageously zany, campy as all get out, crashes between farce and seriousness with wild abandon, and full of unbridled emotions, as the characters scream out a fantastic tracklist of pop hits alongside the originals (perpetuating the 'singing in the shower' aesthetic of Woody Allen's rather delightful Everyone Says I Love You). Plot-wise, it's a ensemble treatise to lust, as the volcanic Kitty (Susan Sarandon) finds the poem her working class mug of a husband (James Gandolfini) has written to his sex-addict mistress Tula (Kate Winslet)'s... err, nether region. Cue lots of singing, lots of character actor cameos, and lots of wanton fetishizing of the female form, or isolated attributes of it, to be specific, as the cast, particularly Steve Buscemi, are all careful to explain, at length, which body parts they're obsessed with. Classy.



Walken Walkens so hard here as Kitty's Cousin Bo that you almost get the sense that Turtorro asked him to do an impression of himself. He's here as a support for her as she sifts through Gandolfini's affair, but takes the opportunity to vocalize his own romantic trauma... by belting out a very literal music video to Tom Jones' "Delilah", betrayal and murder and all (though Turturro's keeping the original vocals playing, forcing Walken to murmur along with Jones, rather letting rip with his own version, is intensely frustrating). At times, Walken's pantomime histrionics are so over-the-top that it's almost too much even for the most dedicated fans. Thankfully, he's careful to allow glimmers of genuine, heartfelt sadness to cross his face, demonstrating how his patriarchal outbursts are born from a place of real hurt, making Bo surprisingly sympathetic amongst his thrashing and yodelling.

Wacky Walken dialogue: Explaining his paradoxical mix of lust and parental slut-shaming when seeing young girls in thongs to Susan Sarandon would seem leerier if Walken didn't burst out with "I wanna BUZZ YOUR BUTT!" like a Tourettes tic halfway through... then asking his flower shop customer, who's been patiently waiting to pay, "Am I right?" His calm calling out "I'm qualified to satisfy ya" to a belly dancer(?) at the cafe he and Sarandon are dining at, or informing her that he expressed his love to his ex by "trac[ing] her name in cow shit" are pretty enjoyably nuts as well.



DOES HE DANCE: It's more manic zombie flailing than dancing, but considering how batshit the rest of the film is, I'll count it. He also gets to knife-dance-fight with a cabal of cops, which is pretty cool.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 8/10 cowbells. Turturro playing Walken for such broad wackiness is tremendously fun, but feels like a bit of a waste of potential. Still, he works his few honest emotional moments like nobody's business. If only Turturro had muted that gosh darn Tom Jones and just let Walken have at it, though. Forgive me Chris-to-pher, I just couldn't take any mooooooooooore.

The Jungle Book (2016)

The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau, 2016) 

Walken plays: King Louie - Gigantopithecus; aspiring florist; jungle VIP

"No, YOU take your hands off ME, you damn dirty human!" 

Synopsis: Favreau's live action remount of the Kipling/Disney class is one of the few remakes that not only matches, but actually improves on its predecessor. It's visually flawless, emotionally robust, and full of enough plucky humour to make the tale of Mowgli the man-cub (Neel Sethi)'s quest for community and self-identity whilst being hunted by vengeful tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) truly an adventure for the ages.

Just when Mowgli's spirits are at their most downtrodden, as dual dads Bagheera (Ben Kingsley) and Baloo (Bill Murray) urge him to flee the jungle to rejoin the nearby village of men for the safety of him and the rest of the creatures of the jungle, along lumbers Walken's King Louie. Godfather of the jungle, he's here to make Mowgli an offer he can't refuse: teach him the secret of 'man's red flower,' and Louie will grant Mowgli both the protection and community he so desperately craves. Giant ape or not, this is the quintessential Walken part, and Favreau works Walken's immense charisma, consummate weirdness, sly charm, and propensity to be genuinely terrifying for all they're worth. I mean, come on: Louie is literally summoned out of the shadows by a cowbell. A COWBELL. This is the sign of a classy, cheeky director treating the mystique and indomitable fan appeal of his star with the respect they deserve.


He wasn't being facetious when he said he had a fever. Thank goodness there's a cowbell handy.


Wacky Walken dialogue: Granting Louie a consummately Walken intro monologue about papaya fruit is a nice touch, but the crown jewel on this King is his rhyming 'ridiculous' with 'gigantopithecus'. Sublime.


"So he says, 'No ourangutans in India.' So I ate him. Because I ain't no pansy-ass ourangutan." 

DOES HE DANCE: Baby, he's the King of the Swingers, the Jungle VIP! But, throughout the course of the film, we only really get a little shuffle from side to side as he throws some trinkets and papaya fruit into the air - one of the film's few ever-so-slight "aww..."s of disappointment. THEN, Favreau uncorks some of the most game-changing credits in cinematic history, as Walken's Louie, presumed dead, explodes out of a pile of rubble, and lets rip with a full-blown jazzy cover of Louie's classic "I Wanna Be Like You," complete with swinging and sashaying around his monkey temple. He sings, baby! He dances, baby! And the viewer's heart - already melted by Favreau's stunning film - finally explodes entirely.

Overall Walken-o-meter: 10/10 cowbells. Christopher Walken playing an outrageously large, singing, dancing, pyromaniac mafioso ape is a spectacle that the entire course of cinema has been leading up to. He's ostentatiously large and in charge, and it's one of the most stupendous oddities of a career chock full of them. The Jungle Book is easily the biggest mainstream film he's ever been a part of, and it's safe to say that - in more than one way - he's the biggest part of it. Oobie-doo.


He reached the top. So he had to stop. T'ain't nothing bothering me.