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.

The closest Walken ever got to a 'Last Supper'. Yes, including playing the angel Gabriel in The Prophecy.

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.

Dude - where's my finger? Oh. 

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.

Carlo Bartolucci: most dangerous when clad in Panama hat

Wacky Walken dialogue: A few takers here:

• [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.

That's got to be at least 5 cowbells in itself.

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.