Thursday, February 09, 2006

The Jean-Paul Belmondo of the New Preposterousness

The Austin Chronicle has a funny article on Paul Walker, star of many goofball B-movies like The Fast and the Furious and Into the Blue. A brief excerpt:

Characterized by vacant eyes, cheerfully bewildered mien, and a distinctly floppy carriage, tripping and bounding about the frame in a uniform of skater T-shirts and cargo shorts, the Paul Walker presence (at zenith in 2 Fast 2 Furious and nadir in Timeline) becomes the ultimate expression of the style through subversion so total as to push beyond any imaginable absurdity. Because no matter how slaphappy the narrative or psychotic the montage, nothing trumps the fugue state induced by seeing a badass action hero as played by a golden retriever puppy.


I haven't given huge amounts of thought to Paul Walker, but it's true that his presence in a movie is shorthand for "this movie is not precisely 'good', but it's probably fun with beer".

1 comment:

  1. Eh, Walker's this generation's Chris O'Donnell. Not much more, not much less.

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