Fast-Walking - The Royal Scam | Trash Cinema Club

Jun

1

Fast-Walking - The Royal Scam

≡ Category: Drama, Highly Recommended, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: James B. Harris
Year: 1982

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

Fast Walking should have been launched James B. Harris into the upper echelon of writer/directors. Instead, the movie sank like a stone, going direct to video. What the hell happened?

My guess is that a focus group happened, and the score cards doomed the flick. Or maybe the Hollywood suits just couldn’t figure out how to market the thing and threw up their hands.

You see, Fast-Walking is an idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind film that doesn’t neatly fit into the pre-digested genres beloved by the American public. It’s scuzzy, lived-in, and observant. There are no real heroes. Wait, I take that back. There is one hero, but he’s not the focus of the plot, just the engine.

Fast-Walking (James Woods) is a prison guard in what looks like Arizona (the film was actually shot in Montana). His pay is so low that he supplements his income with a stint hosing off whores after their shifts in a low-rent bordello that caters to Mexican migrant workers. This guy is obviously a loser, but he schemes of better days, usually while puffing on a joint.

Fast-Walking’s cousin, Wasco (Tim McIntire), is a more hardcore hustler, currently doing a 2 to 10 stint in the same prison for some unnamed crime. Although he’s just arrived, he’s already taken over the prison’s drug concession, but Wasco has even bigger plans, involving the assassination of black power leader Galliot (Robert Hooks), recently transferred to the prison.

Wasco enlists the cooperation of his cousin, Fast-Walking, in the hit. The carrot? Twenty-five thousand bucks, which could bankroll Fast-Walking’s dreams of a commune in Oregon. The stick? Wasco will order a hit on Moke (Kay Lenz), the girl Fast-Walking has been making time with, if Fast-Walking doesn’t play ball. One additional wrinkle: Moke is Wasco’s old lady.

Got all that?

Clearly, this isn’t a typical paint-by-numbers Hollywood product, especially considering that it came out in the 80s, the heyday of Ahnold and his ilk.

As played by James Woods, putative hero Fast-Walking is a total sleaze. He’s just not as evil as his cousin Wasco. Fast-Walking’s squeeze, Moke, is a dead-eyed whore. And to top it off, composer Lalo Schifrin has the nerve to contribute a jovial, down home score that only accentuates the overall feeling of depravity.

But all that isn’t a problem for me when it’s done this well.

By all accounts, the novel that Fast-Walking is based on, The Rap, is a dense wallow in prison culture with dozens of characters and interlocking subplots. James B. Harris has done a masterful job of whittling down that complexity to manageable proportions while still evoking a vividly detailed world that will be alien to most of us.

Harris gets the most from his actors, too. As always, Woods plays the morals challenged schemer to perfection. Tim McIntire is chilling as the sly and faux folksy Wasco. Check out the scene in which he explains how he would expand the prison drug concession. In another life, he would have made a talented CEO. For Goldman Sachs, maybe. Kay Lenz manages to have sleazy sex appeal even as she glides through the landscape like a shark.

For writer/director James B. Harris, Fast-Walking was obviously a labor of love. And considering that every single element of the film is exemplary, I would conclude that Harris’ passion for the material was contagious.

My advice? Catch Fast-Walking while you can.