Here is something I consider to be a fact: Alex Cox made some of the best films of the 1980s. Both Repo Man, an urban satire that blended suburban paranoia with science fiction, and Sid & Nancy, one of the greatest musical biopics of all time, centered around the iconic Sid Vicious and his tragically short life, are definitive masterpieces and refreshing approaches to their subject matter, and thus defined Cox as a director able to make some truly incredible films. It pains me to have to say this, but Walker is most certainly not one of those films, and while it is a fascinating film, it is also very often misguided and a little tragic in how it fails to reach the heights that I thought it would, judging on Cox’s other work, especially the aforementioned cinematic punk rock masterpieces. There is a good film hiding somewhere in Walker, it just didn’t know where to find it, and while Cox has shown himself to be able to use actors wonderfully (bringing out career-best performances from Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Oldman, amongst others, in the previously mentioned films), Walker just did not impress me as much as I was hoping, which is disappointing, to say the least.

The film is based on the life of real-life politician and military leader, William Walker (Ed Harris) who is sent to the South American nation of Nicaragua, where he is supposed to prevent any uprisings or political activities that would impede upon the business of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Peter Boyle), the wealthy industrialist who utilizes the nation as an invaluable part of his worldwide trading company. As his residency in the country grows longer, Walker finds his mind deteriorating as he becomes more powerful and grows to be enamored with being seen as a godlike figure amongst the people of the small nation. As a result, he becomes a totalitarian military leader who has anyone (including his closest allies) who he feels stands in the way of his rise to power, including the President of Nicaragua executed and implements himself as the ultimate leader of the small but resilient nation, and as he starts to sink into insanity, those around him start to turn on him in the effort to assert their own authority and beliefs, informed by the American tradition of Manifest Destiny. However, much like his sanity, Walker has lost all of his morals and ethics, as well as the ability to think logically and act in a way that is rational and decent, and proves that he will stop at nothing to display his bloodthirsty, ruthless power.

This synopsis does arguably make Walker sound far more alluring and exciting than it actually was – and while I would not dare call this film boring (because there is nothing further from the truth that this film is boring, with some unconventional aspects serving to be its biggest strengths, but we’ll get to that later), I would also hesitate in calling it entirely well-developed or formed to the point where it is actually able to reach its full potential. It is a film that does not know exactly where it wants to go in terms of the story, and despite being ultimately very well-intentioned, as well as featuring attempts to be unique, it just resulted in something that was far too scattered and unfocused to be entirely great, which is a pity, considering this film’s very promising premise, which could have been the core of a truly magnificent film. However, Walker is just a little too dull to actually be anything more than a fascinating experiment.

One problem with Walker is that the lead role is almost too brilliant – a role such as William Walker is the exact kind of character that absolutely any actor would relish in portraying because his gradual decline into insanity would allow a performer to commit to playing a truly fascinating figure. The issue here is that while Ed Harris is a marvelous actor who has given some truly fantastic performances in the past, for some reason he just did not deliver her. I am hesitant to say it, but he is almost outright awful in this film, mainly because he is far too subdued and does not seize the opportunity to actually show the true insanity of the character. He is very subtle and only in the last few minutes of the film does he truly show some personality. The detached and emotionless despot is understandably a great role, because it affords an actor the opportunity to be truly sinister and malicious without being a villainous caricature most of the time – yet Harris was just unable to find the true evil in this character, and his attempt at a lack of emotion did not heighten the complex evil of the character, but rather exposed this film’s weaknesses, with Harris feeling far too detached from the world of the film and the story to actually accurately show the malice of William Walker, and in any film, whether it is the hero or the villain, the audience needs to feel something from the character, and Harris’ Walker is just too understated and sombre to give the audience anything to care about, and ultimately his downfall is both obvious and disappointing.

In fact, Walker has quite a large cast, but very few of the performers are actually very good. Harris is fine, but this is a performance that any actor could easily do, and Harris just does not commit to the role, and he has been better in many other films, where he is actually able to show some personality. René Auberjonois probably gives the best performance in this film, playing the eccentric and loyal Major Siegfried Henningson. I am disheartened when I think of the fact that despite being one of the great character actors of his generation, Auberjonois is far too unheralded and has yet to receive just dues for a long and prosperous career, where he has shown an innate ability to be far more expressive than many of his peers, as well as possessing a talent to do so much with very little material. Sy Richardson is also fantastic in Walker, playing Captain Hornsby, a loyal African-American colleague of Walker who shows considerable logic as well as empathy to the people of Nicaragua who fall under Walker’s regime. However, both Auberjonois and Richardson have characters that are underwritten and usually just used as reactionary characters rather than being fully-formed, complex individual who serves a specific function in the story. The rest of the cast is unfortunately very homogenous, as no one truly stands out, and just gravitate towards Walker to support his development – yet, as mentioned previously, Walker has very little character buildout throughout the film, so the lack of meaningful characterization of other characters just further highlights the weaknesses of the film and of Harris’ performance.

However, having said all of this about Walker, it was not entirely awful, and putting aside the lack of characterization, this film has much more going for it than initially seems, and once one realizes exactly what this film was going for, the fact that it may not achieve it is overshadowed by the sheer audacity of what the intention behind the film was. Alex Cox proved himself to be an iconoclast of filmmaking with his groundbreaking work in those two films that defined his career – and tragically, Walker brought that very promising career to a massive lull, as he has yet to achieve the same kind of acclaim since Walker failed. While it is clear I found Walker to be unremarkable, it was far from being awful enough to actually essentially end Cox’s career, because as flawed as it was, there were many admirable ideas and intentions scattered throughout to justify Walker as a unique film at least, even if it wasn’t a particularly good one. The response to Walker was quite harsh, and considering it was a film that actually had potential, the fact that it has achieved more acclaim in recent years, as well as a substantial cult following, may tell you that this is not a bad film in the least.

Postmodernism is something that is tricky to translate into film, but it is something that Cox has shown himself to do exceptionally well in the past, and this is precisely where Walker succeeds – but it requires, like any great postmodern work, a suspension of disbelief and the ability to read between the lines of some of this film’s more abstract choices. The most notable postmodern aspect of this film (being distinctive enough to somewhat define it, being the most iconic aspect of this film, other than Harris’ all-black attire that was clearly inspired by other similar sinister figures with delusions of grandeur and a bit of a problematic killing streak, such as Reverend Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter, a film Cox clearly did watch and which inspired this film to a large extent, but I digress) was the anachronistic nature of the film – as the film progresses, the characters start to use modern-day technology such as lighters, read TIME and People Magazine and in the climax of the film, are rescued by Americans in a helicopter. It is important to remember that Walker never sets out to be an accurate historical representation of true events, but rather a revisionist film that takes many liberties in exploring its subject matter – and in that regard, it is a great success (but not enough to compensate for the glaring weaknesses present in this film)

The decision to introduce these revisionist and anachronistic motifs that are clearly modern devices into a film set in the 19th century was not one done simply to be different, but to emphasize the parallels between Manifest Destiny and the expansion project the United States took in the 20th century to bring their influence to other nations in the hopes of preventing the spread of Communism. It is an idea that the viewer is entirely oblivious to, in which case it just seems like a darkly comedic touch to an already strange film, or the viewer understands the intention, and it becomes far too obvious and overt, but in a way that is actually very admirable and unique. Cox has shown himself to be someone who can subtly manipulate Lyotard’s claim that postmodernism is “incredulity towards metanarratives”, and Cox is one of the most playful of the directors to emerge from this concept of disregarding the overarching narrative in favour of conveying the story in a way that may be inaccurate and defy logic and reason, but heightens the central intentions of the artist – and while Walker may have been deeply flawed, it certainly compensated with the weaknesses through the dedication to presenting something original and a subversive approach to a genre, where conventions and cliches were disregarded.

Speaking of subverting genre, another strength of Walker is its visual aesthetic. Cox was clearly attempting to pay tribute to Western films, using many visual conventions to recreate both the period in which this film is set, as well as films that have been made to reflect that specific era in history. Cox has always been a filmmaker with a keen eye for detail, and Walker is a truly meticulously-constructed film that is gorgeous throughout, and while it may appear to be a relatively conventionally-designed film in terms of the genre, it shows moments of sheer creative genius. A further creative aspect of this film that deserves enormous praise is the score, composed by Joe Strummer, the lead singer of what is most certainly the only band that matters, The Clash. Extremely different from the kind of score we’d expect from this kind of film, it subverts expectations in particular scenes, and does the two things that all successful film scores do – to work together with the film in terms of heightening the experience of certain pivotal moments, as well as being well-made music that engrosses the viewer into the world of the film.

Walker is a film that may appear to be a bit lacking in certain areas, and it leaves a lot to be desired. It is weak in many areas, such as its leading performance by Ed Harris, who is normally exceptional in any performance, but just falls short in representing the titular character adequately. However, for every flaw, there is a genuinely well-made aspect of this film that proves it to be a lot better than it actually could have been, although further attention to other areas of this film would not have gone wasted. Walker is a film that has understandably failed to gain much legitimate passion, but it still has noble intentions and it allows Cox to prove himself to be capable of making subversive and cerebral cinema that is still entertaining. It may not be a great film, but it certainly is an original one and deserves another chance, perhaps not to change perceptions on the film itself, but rather what can be done with playful provocations of form and content. All I want is for Alex Cox to return to making great films again, and even if I found Walker to be unremarkable, it shows his true brilliance and status as one of the most underrated filmmakers of his generation. If someone gives Cox another shot, I am sure the result with be absolutely astonishing.