Critic and author J. Hoberman joins Alex Cox for a conversation following the film

Walker, as played by Ed Harris, is a blue-eyed devil with the cruel conviction that “it is the God-given right of the American people to dominate the Western Hemisphere.” With a ragtag army of fifty-eight “Immortals,” he marched into Nicaragua in 1855 and defeated the nation's defenses. For two years, Walker reigned as self-declared president of the realm. One hundred and thirty years later, Nicaragua, under the Sandinista government, welcomed Alex Cox's flamboyant and cartoon-like political satire, penned by Rudy Wurlitzer of Two-Lane Blacktop and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid fame. Historical accuracy was not the target: Walker is more a broadside at the ship of state, its sails filled with Manifest Destiny. Walker, the man, is an imperial interloper, caught between the moral outrage of his lover (Marlee Matlin) and the colonial corruption of his benefactor, Cornelius Vanderbilt (Peter Boyle). In his high Quaker couture, the puritanical pretender walks through the carnage of battle as though impervious to harm, never nicked or unnerved by a melee that would make Peckinpah proud. He is oblivious to anything, ‘cept his Manifest mission. To push Walker from past to present, Cox deploys anachronisms throughout his chronicle of conquest: Vanderbilt has a computer terminal, a helicopter whisks off dignitaries, the troops smoke Marlboros. It was the eighties after all: Oliver North was looking south and the CIA-backed Contras had started their Nicaraguan insurgency. Walker was a shoot heard ‘round the world.

We recommend taking public transportation to this screening. Parking will be in short supply due to a 7 p.m. Cal football game at Memorial Stadium.