Christopher Walken

Christopher Walken tells a small boy about a watch in Pulp Fiction (1994), and a chapter that has begun to flag becomes worth attending to again. As Captain Koons, he has a speech and the time to give it his own peculiar rhythm. We enjoyed those few minutes more than anything else in the chapter, because his delivery makes the telling worth our attention. Quentin Tarantino gives him room to be odd without making oddness the whole point. We rate Walken most when a director gives those familiar vocal habits a job to do.

The rhythm has a practical source in his early dance training, which informs his physical expressiveness as well as his speech. His dramatic breakthrough came as Nick in The Deer Hunter (1978), before such villainous work in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992). A long career in supporting parts has made the eccentric or threatening Walken familiar. That familiarity can become a casting shortcut. A director still needs to give him something to play beyond the fact that he sounds like Christopher Walken.

The sympathetic father in Catch Me If You Can (2002) offers a useful correction, as does Burt Goodman in Severance (2022). We value that tenderness because it gives us something beyond the expected threat or joke. In Severance, it sits within a programme whose office is built to unsettle, making the gentler performance particularly welcome. It is worth remembering this gentler work when another part asks him to be strange on cue.

Denis Villeneuve uses him differently in Dune: Part Two (2024), where the Emperor seems to have wandered in from a quieter film. He plays the man as tired, and we did not mind the odd fit: another display of menace would have been less interesting. Start with the watch speech for the rhythm, then try Severance for the gentleness.