Reception
Walker garnered predominantly negative reviews; Rita Kempley wrote, "it's gross as it is muddled as it is absurd", in her review for the Washington Post. Fellow Washington Post reviewer Desson Howe queered the "perplexing fusion of cartoon and docudrama ..." In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, "His scenes have no shape, his characters are stick figures, the wit is undergraduate and his soggy set pieces of slow-motion carnage are third-rate Peckinpah imitations." Jay Scott gave the film a positive review in the Globe and Mail: "Cox exposes the limitations of historical drama in Walker with a calculated disregard of its conventions." Vincent Canby also praised Cox's film in the New York Times: "Walker is witty, rather than laugh-out-loud funny. Without being solemn, it's deadly serious...Walker is something very rare in American movies these days. It has some nerve."
Director Alex Cox was never employed again by a major Hollywood studio, and his subsequent films have received only limited distribution in the United States. In a 2008 interview with The A.V. Club, Cox said, "Distribution is controlled by the studios, and I've been on the blacklist of the studios for the last 20 years ... The last movie I was asked to direct was The Running Man… which was actually quite a good film, I thought. I would have liked to have done The Running Man. It was just that Walker happened at the same time."
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