Ed Harris plays the title role, a blindly faithful, pathologically earnest embodiment of manifest destiny. Get a notepad and write down every line that comes out of Harris’s mouth. You could have a solid case of plagiarism against Bush’s speechwriters.
The film is a tad too one-note to sustain itself, and the narrative conceit begins to wear thin, but it’s still a strange and wonderful movie that would’ve slipped through the cracks had it not been for Criterion.
Extras: commentary by Cox and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, documentary making-of, reminiscence 20 years later of an extra on the film.
Grade: B+
Walker is currently available.