America's Sweethearts (2001)

America's Sweethearts (Joe Roth, 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

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.

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.

Stand Up Guys (2012)

Stand Up Guys (Fisher Stevens, 2012)
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.

Candid reaction shots of the stars leaving the premiere of Stand Up Guys

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.