the ending (spoiler)

Woosh... over the head of most American viewers. Ironic, isn't it?

notice how this poster doesn't provide one single source of this film being viciously attacked by "right-wing Republicans"? Because it's all in his head. It never happened. No one cared about the pompous clown Alex Cox in 1987 and they don't care about him now.

I remember this film for all the reasons you have all stated here. I had never seen anything so weirdly anachronistic before in my life, and it made me feel a dozen different things in all directions. Mission accomplished, I guess. I felt that it was meant to be thought provoking, and for me, it definitely was.
As for the right-wing attack accusations, I won't speak to it, since it is the opinionary response of one viewer. One man's meat.
I can however, offer up the original New York Times review of the film.
See for yourself what the pundits had to say at the time of release, and judge for yourself.



Walker (1987)
December 4, 1987
Film: 'Walker,' Starring Ed Harris
By VINCENT CANBY
Published: December 4, 1987
LEAD: TAKING the true story of William Walker, the American adventurer who once ruled as the self-declared president of Nicaragua (1856-57), the director Alex Cox and the writer Rudy Wurlitzer have made ''Walker,'' a hip, cool, political satire that's almost as lunatic as the title character.

TAKING the true story of William Walker, the American adventurer who once ruled as the self-declared president of Nicaragua (1856-57), the director Alex Cox and the writer Rudy Wurlitzer have made ''Walker,'' a hip, cool, political satire that's almost as lunatic as the title character.

The main difference is that the film intends to be funny while Walker, all five egocentric, puritanical feet of him, was fatally humorless. Though set in the mid-19th century, ''Walker'' is full of anachronisms, including Zippo lighters. At one point Walker's men are evacuated from a ticklish situation by a 1980's helicopter.

Mr. Cox and Mr. Wurlitzer apparently believe there's no point in wasting the hindsight conferred on them by time. Poor Walker couldn't see beyond the end of his nose, which is why his bold, blundering, occasionally brilliant campaigns ended in disaster.

For the film makers, Walker's invasion of Nicaragua, with 58 men and, initially, the enthusiastic support of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (''I want that country stable!''), marked the beginning of a new age in the relations between this country and Latin America. They also clearly believe that this ''new age'' continues with the United States' support of the Nicaraguan contras. Their case, like a Thomas Nast cartoon, is flip, irreverent, sparely made and unkindly persuasive.

''Walker,'' which opens today at the Sutton and other theaters, doesn't pretend to be middle-of-the-road. It was produced with the complete cooperation of the Sandinista Government, mostly in Nicaragua where foreign intervention remains a vivid reality and not a memory of a colorful, bygone era.

It's difficult to realize today that the real-life Walker (1824-1860), who's now lucky to get a couple of paragraphs in an encyclopedia, was, briefly, one of the most celebrated public personalities of his time.

A qualified doctor, lawyer and journalist by the age of 24, Walker, like many of his contemporaries, wholeheartedly embraced the idea of America's ''manifest destiny'' as defined by John L. O'Sullivan in his U.S. Magazine & Democratic Review in 1845. ''Our manifest destiny,'' O'Sullivan wrote, ''is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.''

The French describe people like Walker as chauvinist, after Nicolas Chauvin, who embraced Napoleon's imperial cause long after it was lost. The British term, jingoist (from the phrase ''by jingo''), originated in a music-hall song popular at the time of the Crimean War. In this country, Walker and his kind were known as spread-eaglists.

Once they'd overspread the continent allotted by Providence, it seemed only natural to spread a little farther, first into Cuba and then into Mexico. This is where the film picks up Walker's story and where he first caught the attention of the American public and suffered his first defeat.

After failing to liberate Baja California from Mexico in 1854, Walker returned to this country to be tried (and acquitted) on charges of violating United States neutrality laws. The following year he took off for the west coast of Nicaragua to lend support to Nicaraguan liberals engaged in civil war with conservatives. In the ensuing confusion, he wound up as Nicaragua's president, as well as a mid-19th-century media phenomenon who almost persuaded President Pierce that Nicaragua should be annexed to the United States as a slave state.

Mr. Cox (''Repo Man,'' ''Sid and Nancy'') and Mr. Wurlitzer (''Two-Lane Blacktop'') treat this extraordinary material not with solemn gravity but with deadpan amazement. ''Walker'' is the cinema equivalent of opera bouffe. It's always sunny looking. The director shoots battle scenes that recall the slow-motion ''blood ballets'' from Sam Peckinpah's ''Wild Bunch.'' Sometimes he speeds up the camera for comic effects that seem less jokey in Tony Richardson's ''Tom Jones.'' Such affectations call attention to themselves, which, I suspect, is Mr. Cox's intention.

Giving the film coherence is its political conscience and the consistent intelligence of Mr. Wurlitzer's screenplay. The movie takes a few liberties with history (Walker and Vanderbilt never actually met, as they do in the film) and condenses time, but it somehow manages to make Walker into a quite engaging fanatic.

Parallels between Walker's patriotism and that of Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, as presented in this summer's televised Iran-contra hearings, will inevitably be made. Yet they seem to be accidental, since the film had finished shooting several months before the hearings began. Ed Harris, who plays Walker, does have a lot of down-home charm, but he also had it when he played John Glenn in ''The Right Stuff.''

Mr. Harris may be a good deal taller than Walker ever was, but he has both the simplicity and the fervor to give substance to what might have been a line-drawing of a character. There's a kind of silent-film pathos in his scenes with Marlee Matlin (the Oscar winner for her performance in ''Children of a Lesser God''), who plays his deaf but highly opinionated fiancee in the film's early sequences.

Once Walker arrives in Nicaragua, the movie becomes a breathless, neo-Brechtian, believe-it-or-not inventory of characters and events that must strike most Americans as outlandishly unbelievable, while many Central Americans may simply nod their heads in recognition.

Walker exhorts his men to act like the ''honored guests'' they are, then looks the other way as they run happily amok. The members of his motley crew retreat from a battle they've won. Walker talks about sacred trust, spiritual regeneration and freedom but finally, when cornered (after losing Vanderbilt's support), announces that he's found a solution to his country's economic problems: slavery.

Members of the excellent supporting cast, in addition to Miss Matlin, include Peter Boyle as Vanderbilt, Blanca Guerra as an aristocratic Nicaraguan beauty who seduces the priggish Walker, Gerrit Graham and William O'Leary as Walker's tag-along brothers, and Rene Auberjonois and Richard Masur as members of Walker's army.

''Walker'' is witty, rather than laugh-out-loud funny. Without being solemn, it's deadly serious. It's also provocative enough to reach beyond - if not preach to - those who already are converted.

''Walker'' is something very rare in American movies these days. It has some nerve. Past as Prologue WALKER, directed by Alex Cox; written by Rudy Wurlitzer; director of photography, David Bridges; film editors, Carlos Puente Ortega and Mr. Cox; music by Joe Strummer; production designer, Bruno Rubeo; produced by Lorenzo O'Brien; a Universal Picture. At Sutton, 57th Street and Third Avenue; Waverly, Avenue of the Americas at Third Street; Metro Twin, 99th Street and Broadway. Running time: 90 minutes.

This film is rated R. William Walker... Ed Harris Ephraim Squier... Richard Masur Maj. Siegfried Henningson... Rene Auberjonois Timothy Crocker... Keith Szarabajka Captain Hornsby... Sy Richardson Byron Cole... Xander Berkeley Stebbins... John Diehl Cornelius Vanderbilt... Peter Boyle Ellen Martin... Marlee Matlin Norvell Walker... Gerrit Graham James Walker... William O'Leary Yrena... Blanca Guerra