The Last Embrace (1979)

Director: Jonathan Demme
Writer: David Shaber
Genre: Spy Thriller
Duration: One Hour, 42 minutes
Other Actors: Roy Scheider, Janet Margolin, John Glover, Sam Udell
Similar Films: Notorious, Marathon Man, Three Days of the Condor
Movie in a Sentence: Harry Hannan (Scheider) was a top-notch American spy until he got his wife killed by accident, which brought on a nervous breakdown, but now he's out of the hospital and someone's trying to kill him and they're sending him death threats in ancient Aramaic, and his only friends are a cute graduate student (Margolin) who moved into his apartment while he was away, her college Professor boyfriend (Glover), and a mysterious old man (Udell) who is a member of a secret Jewish organization, but can he be trusted, can she be trusted...
Can ANYONE be trusted?

Scheider about to give the ol' knife-hand to a quivering Patinkin

MPAA Rating: This movie got an 'R' rating, and I'd have to agree. There's some profane language, a barrage of not-very-bloody violence, and a handful of nipple-shots, but really, the scene where Margolin has sex with a guy in a bathtub, pushes him under the soapy water and doesn't stop riding him until his death-twitches are over, that probably has to push it past a PG-13, right? It's so hard to tell these days.

FUN FACT: Margolin, Glover and Walken were in ANNIE HALL together, though they didn't share a scene. Glover was Annie's boyfriend (the one that wanted to die getting ripped apart by animals), and Margolin was one of Woody's girlfriends, the one that wanted him to join the party when all he wanted to do was watch the basketball game on tv!

My Score: I'll give it a 7 out of 10. Nothing about this film is amazing, but it does alright. It could have been sharper, tighter, better. But it's entertaining, and nothing about it angers me, so yeah, good story, if not a little silly, while taking itself very seriously.
Available to Own: Only on VHS! This is yet another of Walken's films that still hasn't made the leap to DVD. If you're curious, I'm keeping track of these as-yet-un-DVDed films through the tag 'VHS only'. I believe there will be about a half dozen of them all-told.

FUN FACT: Walken works with director Jonathan Demme again in 1982 in the short-film 'WHO AM I THIS TIME?' based on a Kurt Vonnegut short-story. A little something that any Walken-ite should definitely check out!

Should You Watch This? Yes, though I have trouble getting excited about it. It's right on the line between 'ooh and ehh.' You should watch it, but walk, don't run towards it. Lower your expectations and it'll be fine.
Walken Content: A single, isolated, two-minute scene. Just a wee little bit o' the Walken.  He plays Eckart, Harry's condescending boss at the Agency. Though it's short, it is a good little scene. Eckart chides Harry for demanding his job back after three months of "vacation". Walken wears these over-sized plastic-framed rounded rectangular '80s glasses in the beginning of the scene. And he sports a thin cop-moustache, looking a lot like he did almost 20 years later in NICK OF TIME (a fantastic film btw, but I'll get to that one later). Unfortunately, that is the last we see of Walken in this film.

Walken in The Last Embrace

Walken Quote: Let me set it up. Okay, so like I said, Harry Hannan goes in to see his old boss about getting some work. Harry keeps trying to smooth over the messy details of his last departure: why he left, how long he's been gone, etc. Finally, Walken can't take anymore of this:

            "Hannon, you had a breakdown. You were in a sanitarium.
                  It wasn't a leave [of absence] it was a breakdown. Why do you
                  force me say these things? Do you honestly think we'd send one
                  of our people up to a railroad station in Connecticut just to push
                  you under a train?"

Then he does this great thing: Walken flares his eyes at him, and then asks, "Okay?" in this I'm-cutting-the-malarkey kind of way. It's subtle, the eye thing, but it adds a nice touch of humanity to their encounter.

General:  This film seems like it wants to be Hitchcock, but it ends up looking more like De Palma trying to be Hitchcock. That is a distinction that doesn't kill it as a good film, it just helps to illustrate why it isn't a great film. I don't hate De Palma's films. He has his moments. I love 'Scarface' (the soundtrack is lame though) and of course 'The Untouchables', and I actually liked 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' even though that seems to be an unpopular opinion. But he's just so mainstream and, I don't know...flashy? Chintzy? Gaudy? None of those are the right word, but you get the idea. And not that I'm a huge fan of Hitchcock either btw. I think 'The Birds' (among others) is highly overrated. Whatever. I digress. It's a bit derivative is all.

But don't let me discourage you. There are a good number of scenes worthy of watching this for. There is a fun quick scene where someone chases Scheider through a park while a chill-looking dude kicks back on a park bench and plays some chase music on his ukulele.

George Hillman ukes it up

There is another scene where Scheider thinks someone is trying to push him under a train, so he almost drives his knife-hand through the jugular of Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin), but he is stopped in time by the dad from Alf (Max Wright). Fun stuff.

There is another scene where the bad-guy cowboy from the 'Blues Brothers' movie (Charles Napier) attacks Scheider up in the belltower. Death by bells!!! 'Nuff said.

And then we have Margolin. The female lead. I don't want to ruin any surprises talking about what happens with her, so I'll just say that, like this film, Margolin has her moments where she shines, but she also falls flat at times as well. So. Just saying.

Despite some fun tangents, The Last Embrace mainly takes itself quite seriously, to its own detriment. It gets melodramatic at times, and never recognizes its own absurdity. For example, I thought it was funny that Scheider, the super-capable secret agent, spends the entire film garbed in a very dapper, very conspicuous all-white suit. Quite the urban chameleon, this guy. In fact, he can't enter a room without screaming at someone, manhandling a stranger, crying, or spilling hydrochloric acid on himself.

Excessive tanning may induce paranoia

Oh, and did I mention Scheider is friggin' crazy in this. He's intense all the time and he flips out at the slightest thing. He runs around looking funny, attacking anyone who looks at him funny. And also he's, well... He's a bit of a dick. Really. He's mean to everyone, including his "love" interest, which makes it a little hard to connect to him on an emotional or sympathetic level.

Overall, I think this can be a fun film experience, as long as you don't take it as seriously as they want you to. Twists and turns and colorful characters, oh my! I wouldn't have minded more Walken, big surprise, but the little that was there was solid. Enjoy.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Director: Michael Cimino
Writers: Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, Louis Garfinkle, Quinn K. Redeker
Genre: War Drama
Duration: 3 hours, 2 minutes
Other Actors: Robert Deniro, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale
MPAA Rating: This film is rated 'R' for Really-graphic-violence. F-bombs and shi-nanigans abound as well, but who gives a rat's abs about swears when the things you're seeing on the screen are so very disturbing. Enjoy!
My Score: 8 out of 10
Available to Own: DVD and Blu-Ray
Similar Films: CASUALTIES OF WAR, PLATOON, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD, FULL METAL JACKET

Russian Footsie?

Movie in a Sentence: The Vietnam conflict affects the lives of a small tight-knit group of young Pennsylvania steel-workers, focusing mainly on the friendship of Michael (Deniro), Stevie (Savage), and Nick (Walken) as they survive the horrors of POW torture, and struggle with returning to the small-town lives they had before the war.  
Should You Watch This? Yes. This is a heavy, bloody, emotional film. Admittedly, it is over-long, and it does take a while to build up steam, but... wait a minute, what do you mean you haven't seen this?! Just watch it already. Really.
Walken Content: 65%.
Walken Quote: I wanted to find one isolated line from Walken that could stand on its own, but nothing seemed like a good fit. So I decided to go with a quiet conversation that Nick (Walken) and Mike (Deniro) share near the beginning, before their upcoming hunting trip and, of course, the war.

       Michael: I'll tell you one thing, if I found out my life had to end up
                        in the mountains I'd be alright, but it has to be in your
                        mind.
       Nick: What? One Shot?
       Michael: Two is pussy.
       Nick: I don't think about one shot anymore, Mike.
       Michael: You have to think about one shot. On shot is what it's all
                        about. The deer has to be taken with one shot. I try to tell
                        people that; they don't listen. Do you ever think about
                        Vietnam?
       Nick: Yeah. I don't know. I guess I'm thinking about the deer - going to
                    'Nam. I like the trees, y'know? I like the way the trees are, on
                    the mountain, all different. The way the trees are. (beat) I sound
                    like some asshole, right?

This intimate exchange happens in the few minutes they have away from their loud and overtly boisterous gang of friends."One shot" refers to taking a deer down with only one shot, which is more than just macho posturing. Mike's insistence on one-shot reveals his respect for the animal he kills by inflicting a minimum of pain. There are all kinds of parallels you can draw between his "one-shot" philosophy and his impact on the rest of the film.

Nick doesn't care about any of that though. He likes the trees! We see a glimpse of the sensitive guy that Walken plays, the nature-lover that is irrevocably damaged by the horrors of war.

Pensive Walken

GENERAL: The Deer Hunter is a powerful film. There are numerous iconic moments of genius, like De Niro holding a bullet up to the Stanley-the-whiner and saying, "This is this. This isn't something else. This is this." and the multiple nerve-wracking scenes involving Russian Roulette, and De Niro making a bargain with the deer. This film is beautifully shot, painstakingly textured, and most of the performances are grounded in deliciously gritty realism.

On the other hand, it needs to be edited better. I know, I know: it won an oscar specifically for editing. I don't care. It's about an hour too long, and a lot of that hour is made up of tediously long shots of the local boys working at the steel mill, endless wedding celebration, and many shots that just plain went on too long. It adds up. And it slows it down. Sure, I get it. That's his style. The pace is deliberate. He's showing the community, establishing the norm, their jobs, before taking them to Nam and traumatizing them. I get it. I'm just impatient. And I think there is room in that film for a compromise, something closer to two and a half hours.

The awards and attention that Walken got for this film catapulted him into the realm of superstardom. The year was 1978. He won his first and only Oscar for his role in this film. Up until this moment, he was still unsure of his permanence as a film actor. Can you imagine, young Walken doubting himself, his powers, his place? But that little golden trophy meant steady work for decades to come. It was confirmation of the highest sort.

Mr. Walken had indeed arrived.

Walken in The Deer Hunter

Shoot the Sun Down (1978)

Director: David Leeds
Writer: David Leeds and Richard Rothstein
Genre: Western
Duration: One hour, thirty-three minutes
MPAA Rating: Someone gave this movie a PG. But I gotta say this is kind of a dark film for just PG. This is no children/family movie. The language is 'salty'. Margot Kidder competes in a one-woman wet t-shirt contest. And the violence is not muted, cartooney or distanced at all. It's right up in your face, close, jarring and bloody. Also, the main bad guy in this is the charming sociopath mercenary-type, a smiling bastard killing multitudes for profit and a giggle. I would feel more than justified in raising that rating to at least a PG-13.
 Available to Own: Only on VHS. Yup. Outrage. Scandal. I repeat: NOT released on dvd yet. Maybe it'll skip the dvd and jump straight to blu-ray. I'm not saying it's a perfect movie, but since when was that the criteria? C'mon Hollywood, get it digitalized. It's got stars. Thrills. Sex and violence. It's got a friggin' knife-throwing-cowboy Walken in it for crissakes! Put it on DVD. Just do it.

 Other Actors: Margot Kidder, Geoffrey Lewis, Bo Brundin

Lewis, in High Plains Drifter

FUN FACT: You may recognize Geoffrey Lewis from a plethora of other Westerns, as Eastwood's friend in a bunch of his later non-cowboy films, or more recently as one of the victims in Rob Zombie's THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, but what you may not know is that he is Juliette Lewis's father!

Similar Films: Stage Coach, Treasure of Sierra Madre, 3:10 to Yuma, The Dollars Trilogy

Movie In a Sentence: Mr. Rainbow (Walken) is a knife-throwing cowboy-type, wandering around Mexico in 1836 when he becomes intrigued by the plight of a young English lady (Kidder) who, unfortunately, is the indentured slave of an erstwhile navy captain (Brundin) who is now consumed with finding the buried treasure of Montezuma, an act which arouses the interest of the local filthy scoundrel (Lewis) who will stop at nothing to get the gold for himself.

Should You Watch It: Yes. It isn't a perfect film, I know, but (1) Lewis is suuuuuuch a bastard here, ya gotta see it. (2) Margot Kidder was adorable back then. For more convincing, please refer to the gratuitous bath scene. And the clincher (3) Walken is an unstoppable bad-ass. He survives getting tied to the desert floor and attacked by vultures. He brings a knife to a gunfight and wins. And he steals Superman's soon-to-be girlfriend. Boo-ya.

She doesn't believe you for a second. C'mon, don't kid a Kidder.

FUN FACT: Both stars of this film, Walken and Kidder, made their (arguably) biggest movies immediately after this one, Walken of course in The Deer Hunter, and Kidder as Lois Lane in Superman.                   

My Score: 8 out of 10. Geez, ehh I don't know, maybe '8' is too high. The editing is choppy. It's reeeeeeeally slow in parts. I'd be hard-pressed to say it's a "great" movie... But no, enough equivocating! It is good enough. I will stick with the ocho. And eight is great.

Walken thru the desert like the man with no name

Walken Content: High. 80%, an hour, whatever. He's in it. He's all over it. He is the romantic lead and it suits him quite nicely. His character is this great, laconic, troubled, cowboy, loner, anti-hero. He has his own code that he lives by, loves by -- and kills by!

Walken Quote: This is how he haggles a deal with the bad-guy when a four-foot solid-gold wagon wheel is on the line:

      " It's two against one. A three-day ride to Santa Fe. Under those
      circumstances you're dead. I'll even the odds for a quarter-share
      of the wheel."    ~  Rainbow

Walken doesn't need guns, he shoots the sun down with his steely-eyed stare.

FUN FACT: Originally, Walken was supposed to wear a pair of "colored" sunglasses (his character's name is Mr. Rainbow), but the director took one look at Walken in the glasses and said, "Forget it. They just looked weird, not cool or believable at all." But he still kept the name!

GENERAL: This film is an obscure little gem that's been all but swallowed by time. Practically no one's even heard of it, never mind seen it. And that's a shame. This is the kind of movie that doesn't get made anymore. The drawn out, quiet stretches of time that are punctuated with quick, savage bursts of violence.

Actually, no. I exaggerated. They do get made, but just not very often and they tend to fly under the main-stream radar. Two recent examples are Takashi Miike's 13 ASSASSINS and Nicolas Winding Refn's VALHALLA RISING, both are amazing films that share a common pace and tone with this one. Come to think of it, THE AMERICAN fits the bill too. So okay, they're out there, you just have to find them.

All of these films somehow manage to be both brutal and contemplative. Whether about samurai, vikings, contemporary hit-men or knife-throwing cowboys, at heart these are the patient stories of quiet men who possess quick bloody hands and are driven by a peculiar sense of honor that won't let them walk away from the fight.

Annie Hall (1977)

Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman
Duration: 93 mins
Available: on DVD
Genre: Cynical Romantic Comedy
Rated: PG
Actors: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Carol Kane, Shelley Duvall, Janet Margolin
Comparable Films: (500) Days of Summer, High Fidelity, London, Up In the Air
Movie in a Sentence: A neurotic comic analyzes his past relationship with a free-spirited woman, and by extension examines his life in general.
Should You Watch: Yes. You should. That's it. Just watch it.
RATING: I'll go 9 out of 10. It's quotable, wry, and annually rewatchable.
Walken Content: A mere minute and a half. But wowzers, what a memorable scene. Word on the street is that Walken got his role in The Deer Hunter because of this little monologue.

 FUN FACT: His scene was originally cut from the movie for "pacing"

Walken Quote:  "Can I confess something? I tell you this because as an artist I think you will understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night, I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast, I have the sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly head on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline."     ~ Duane Hall

General Thoughts: Classic Woody Allen. One of his best, surely. He's sarcastic, yet still tender. Self-deprecating but narcissistic. Such deliciously human contradictions for a misanthrope to embody. And the film is introspective but it never gets stagnant, it's always moving. That is why he can get away with moping around the whole time. This is such a high energy movie - even if it is mostly people talking.

There's always movement and conflict. Whether it's an invasion of spiders, the last-ditch escape attempt of lobsters, Annie driving insanely fast in traffic, or the cacophony that is Woody's childhood family, the audience is always being taken somewhere, so I never get impatient with all of the tangents and digressions that Woody goes off upon.

And then he's interviewing random people on the street and getting painfully honest responses. Suddenly he's been cartoon-ized and he's having a lover's spat with Snow White's Evil Stepmother. Always moving, always surprising.

From what I gather, this film is a bit biographical, both for him, and Diane Keaton (who played Annie). Supposedly, Diane's real name is Diane Hall and her nickname used to be Annie. Huh! Isn't that's funny! Also, her and Carol Kane (Alison Porchnik) have been friends since they were young. So. There's that.

Listen. Everyone knows this is a great film. I'm not saying anything new here. And Walken is perfection in it. Quiet, intense, barely contained, bat-shit-crazy perfection. Walken was given a tiny throwaway role, the crazy-brother-of, and he nailed it so hard that people are still talking about it thirty years later. Cheers.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976)

Directed and Written: Paul Mazursky
Duration: 111 mins
In: color
Available to Own: on DVD
MPAA Rating: R
Genre: Coming-of-age Drama
Actors: Lenny Baker, Shelley Winters, Ellen Greene, Lou Jacobi, Jeff Goldblum

Comparable Films: The Graduate, A Bronx Tale, Annie Hall*(Walken Film)
Movie in a Sentence: A young New York Actor and his friends deal with the complications of leaving home, falling in and out of love, suicide and other existential dilemmas.
Should You Watch This: Yes, just be in the right mood for it.
RATING: Objectively 7 out of 10, but Walken's presence bumps it up to an 8
Walken Content: Just under a quarter of the film is Walkenized. But it's a shiiiny quarter!
Walken Quote:  "I did run away from home. When I was 15. I knew I wanted to be a writer. I knew. I also knew I wanted to sleep with a lot of different women. What can I tell you? People get hurt."

General Thoughts: Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a coming-of-age drama set in 1953 about the people in an aspiring actor's life when he moves out of his parents' house and into a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village.

Larry has an overbearing mother (Shelley Winters in an almost cartoon-like performance of THE Jewish mother) who can't let go of her son, and a pregnant (spoiler?) girlfriend (Ellen Greene, remember Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors: "Oh Seemowah!") who doesn't want the baby and may in fact not want Larry either. This is a well-written, well-acted period-piece that explores themes of personal identity, Jewishness, monogamy, abortion, acting (both on the stage and amongst friends), Jewishness, and suicide.
Oh and it's funny too.

Though Larry Lapinsky is the main character, it is the myriad of colorful secondaries that make this film work as well as it does. His boss at the juice bar, Herb, played by Lou Jacobi is great in this. I remember him as Murray from Amazon Women on the Moon, but he was also in Roseland with our own Mr. Walken just a year after this was released. He seems to play the same uber-Jewish oldish-man caricature in everything (and by everything I mean these three films) and that's fine by me because I delight in the rhythms and quirks of that accent. Everything's a question and an accusation simultaneously. He bullies, yells, and goes on tirades, but there's something inherently avuncular about his bull-dog manner. Interestingly, he's like a male version of Larry's mother, but without the screeching.

A shockingly young-looking Jeff Goldblum has a whopping 3 minutes of air-time, but I triple-must mention it because he is a such an endearingly self-righteous ponce in this. He is playing an actor who is flabbergasted that he has to audition for a role, and he isn't afraid to voice his objections or  his opinions with anyone. Wonderful stuff, but oh so brief.

If you don't blink, a sombrero-ed twenty-something Bill Murray is on the screen for all of two seconds as the camera pans across a crowded bar. He is Nick Kessler, the subject of an anecdote Larry tells his girlfriend. I was all like, "What the?! Was that Bill Muray!! Nawwww, it couldn't be." And yet, it was. Uncredited, fleeting, yet undeniably:  Bill Murray.

A lot of the scenes revolve around the friends that Larry has acquired in the Village. But the more I think about them, and their group dynamic, and their back-story, I think I will just let you find out about them yourself, cause let's face it: you've already decided whether or not you're going to track this movie down and watch it. So whaddaya WANT for my life? ... Eh? What's that? More Walken? Agreed.

Though it could be argued that Walken's character, the poet Robert Fulmer, is one of 'the friends,' I would say he is really more of a friendly acquaintance. And when I say 'friendly', I mean he smiles patiently at their jokes and he is playful with them, but Robert is not one of them.

He is like a handsome prince traveling with a motley circus troupe. His clothes are expensive and his poise is elegant, but it is his outspoken pragmatic morality that most noticeably clashes with their liberal sensitivities. He is certainly a minority amongst this group of starry-eyed idealists, but he is chock full of confidence and never misses an opportunity to test the integrity of their opinions. And he does it all with such charm! They love him for it. He uses accents in his anecdotes and quotes William Blake on a whim. Robert is so unwaveringly worldly, charming and well-spoken that he almost seems supernatural standing next to these flawed and emotional young bohemians.

Though I was generally annoyed with Larry and his enthusiastic portrayal of a bad actor and a self-centered boyfriend, I loved his girlfriend, and the friends and everyone else, so in the end, not too shabby. It was funny, and touching, and interesting to see that area of New York in that particular moment of history.

Thirty of the 111 minutes in this film are Walken-filled goodness. He is the antagonist, but he is no villain, and he is not without his own sympathies. Even if you don't buy my opinion of the rest of it, Walken's performance in this film is certainly enough reason by itself to watch it. He conga-dances, Yiddish-talks, and Chaplin-walks out of a cafe. He is a smooth-talking scoundrel and a dastardly bastard.

And he's great.

The Mind Snatchers (1972)

Directed by Bernard Girard; written by Ron Whyte (from the play by Dennis Reardon); 1972; color; 94 mins; rated PG; available on DVD; a.k.a. The Happiness Cage, and The Demon Within

Genre: Sci-fi/psychological Thriller
Actors: Joss Ackland, Ralph Meeker, Ronny Cox
Comparable Films: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Brainstorm*(also stars Walken)
Movie in a Sentence: Pugnacious misanthrope becomes an unwilling guinea-pig for a military-financed behavior modification experiment involving a button wired directly to the pleasure sensor in the brain.
Should You Watch This? Yes, Walken is magnificent in this and the rest of it is good, too.
RATING: I'll go 8 out of 10, maybe a high eight.
Walken Content: Chock full! Lotsa Walken!
Walken Quote: So Walken's girlfriend visits him in prison, and she's upset because they broke his arm and imprisoned him even though he's innocent of the charges. She's getting all worked up and he's calm as a clam, sitting there telling her she's boring him. She calls him "unhappy."
And he responds, "You remember that man we saw in Frankfurt? The mentally retarded man who just kept smiling while everyone around him was screaming? Well he was happy."


General Thoughts: Christopher Walken's first starring role. Our boy is all over this movie. Does he earn it? You bet your sweet bippy he does. He is a nihilist here, a brooding brute. He is skinny but scrappy, picking fist-fights with girls as foreplay, never once apologizing, not to anyone. He is an animal loose in the world, baring his teeth and snapping at the locals. But he's a rebel who is also in the military (good choice, fella), and they break guys like him for breakfast. Or at the very least transport guys like him to a remote clinic where they do dangerous behavior-modification-brain-experiments on him. And then they eat a healthy breakfast.

But not Walken, his mind's gonna be snatched!

The Mind Snatchers is a psychological thriller with a hint of sci-fi. It is also known as The Happiness Cage, which is its original title, and just between you and me: I like it better. Sure, 'The Mind Snatchers' is sharper, it grabs you (if you will), but it just feels like false bravado and it doesn't quite match the tone or pace of the film. 'The Happiness Cage' works as a title because it speaks to the meat of the film's concern: artificially inducing pleasure as a means of control.

Dr. Frederik is a brain-specialist, played well by Joss Ackland, whom I always think of as the bad guy in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey; sorry Joss if that makes you wince. Here, he is no 'Mad Scientist' out for progress at any cost. He is vocally introspective, sympathetic, and struggling with the ethics of sacrifice for the greater good. He discovers a way to hardwire a button straight to the pleasure-sensor inside a brain. Bing! Like orgasm on tap. Sure, his intentions are noble (science, medicine, therapy, etc) but he just can't control his military sugar-daddy Major Bigdeal So-and-So who naturally wants to militarize the technology, and just who is gonna stop him?

Walken's character, Reese, is antagonistic and an active misanthrope, but I like him because he's funny about it, and I believe him because his integrity never bends. He is likeable in a Jim Morrison kind of way, a brilliant asshole with a stupid chip on his shoulder. Reece is a "button-pusher" (ahem), the kind of guy that is always trying to get a reaction out of people while passionately demanding to be left alone. He is college-educated, and a private in the army stationed in Germany.

When MPs break his arm trying to arrest him for allegedly beating a woman (he had heard his girlfriend's friend trashing him, so he stares her down (he's SO intense in this), and tells her flat-out, "I don't care if you're a girl, I'll punch you right in the mouth. Get up." She leaves with daggers in her eyes, but untouched) it turns out his psych profile matches what Frederik is looking for in a test-patient, so off he goes to Dr. Frederik's isolated, prison-like clinic.

Ronny Cox (you might remember him as the bad guy in both RoboCop and Total Recall) is Sgt. Buford Miles. This cowboy hat wearing, happy-go-lucky hick is Reece's roommate at the clinic, and he is a good foil for him. Miles' manner, his drawl and country-boy naivete are annoying at first, but it is played right, and it makes him endearing in a younger brother kind of way. Perhaps a slightly retarded younger brother kind of way.

The Mind Snatchers has a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest kind of feel, though it pre-dates the film by three years (Ken Kesey wrote the novel Cuckoo's in 1962) and it definitely has a spirit of its own. It is of a darker breed, more willing to wax philosophically about these concepts they're dealing with: motivation, control, social responsibility.

Walken had called the film "a piece of garbage". But then again, he also feared that his career was over. Fortunately, he is a professional performer, not a critic. And, fortunately again, he was wrong on both counts. Though it was flawed in areas: pacing, transitions, the ending could have been stronger, and his girlfriend in the film was an awful actress. Despite these weaknesses and more, this was no garbage. This is Walken marking his territory. This is Walken taunting his enemies. This is Walken killing it. The end of his career?

No, Chris. This is just the beginning.