There are few actors with the range that Christopher Walken has. Not many actors could appear in the Vietnam War epic The Deer Hunter and the Adam Sandler comedy Click. Not many actors could appear in the neo-noir crime thriller True Romance and Saturday Night Live’s “More Cowbell” sketch. Walken has played all kinds of roles – cops, criminals, soldiers, an ape, an ant etc. – for all kinds of directors, including Quentin Tarantino, Michael Cinimo, Tim Burton, and Steven Spielberg. He’s done Shakespeare on stage and he’s even played a Bond villain.
10 At Close Range (87%)
This little-known crime drama is based on a real-life crime family that operated out of Pennsylvania in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Christopher Walken stars alongside Sean Penn and it tells the story of a couple of teenagers who get reacquainted with their estranged father and find themselves drawn into his lifestyle as a mobster. It’s a curious mix of neo-noir and straight-up gangster movie that was directed by James Foley, who has since gone on to helm the second and third Fifty Shades movies. Between At Close Range and those mundane erotic dramas, he also directed the terrific character-driven movies Fear and Glengarry Glen Ross.
9 TIE: Hairspray (91%)
Hairspray is a musical comedy about segregation, which would sound entirely distasteful if it didn’t have its heart in the right place. Nikki Blonsky stars in the lead role as bright-eyed teenage outcast Tracy Turnblad, while John Travolta famously donned a wig and makeup to play Tracy’s mother, Edna. Christopher Walken plays Wilbur Turnblad, Tracy’s father and Edna’s husband. Apparently, Travolta specifically asked the producers to consider casting Walken in the role, and he ended up beating Billy Crystal and Jim Broadbent to the part of Tracy’s father. Absurd casting aside, Travolta and Walken did make for a compelling on-screen pair.
8 TIE: The Dead Zone (91%)
Film adaptations of Stephen King novels have been around for almost as long as Stephen King novels themselves have been around. The Dead Zone tells the story of a man who, through a freak accident, gains the ability to see how people will die. If he touches someone, he has a vision of their death, and no matter what he tries to do to prevent it, that’s how they die. (It was parodied hilariously in a “Treehouse of Horror” episode of The Simpsons with Ned Flanders in a segment called “The Ned Zone.”) Christopher Walken played the lead role in movie version of The Dead Zone.
7 TIE: Pulp Fiction (92%)
Christopher Walken only appears in one scene in Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino’s sophomore directorial effort, but he’s unforgettable in it. He plays Captain Koons in the prologue to the movie’s second story, “The Gold Watch.” He comes to see a young Butch Coolidge and tells him about his father’s gold watch, which he brought all the way back from Vietnam for him.
The watch is a family heirloom that Butch’s dad stashed on his person while they were both prisoners-of-war and asked him to bring it home and give it to his son. Walken delivers the monologue brilliantly, leaving an impression with just one scene in a two-and-a-half-hour movie.
6 TIE: True Romance (92%)
This neo-noir romantic thriller was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott. Scott got a hold of Tarantino’s script for Reservoir Dogs and wanted to direct it, but since Tarantino was set on directing that one himself, he gave True Romance to Scott. While it’s underappreciated, True Romance is a brilliant movie. Its writer’s distinctive dialogue style can be heard in every scene, while Scott brings his signature visual style to the movie, making its setting of Detroit a character of its own. Christopher Walken shares a scene with Dennis Hopper that is often termed “the Sicilian scene” that is one of the most brilliantly acted and masterfully written scenes ever put on film.
5 Antz (93%)
There was some ugly business going on behind the scenes of Antz, because Jeffrey Katzenberg pretty much stole the idea for a computer-animated movie about ants from Pixar. Pixar was working on its sophomore effort, A Bug’s Life, and Katzenberg broke away to form his own animation studio, which he started with Antz, a pretty shameless rip-off of A Bug’s Life. The main difference with Antz is that Woody Allen was cast in the lead role, and he did some uncredited rewrites on the script to make his character more of a neurotic Woody Allen type. Sharon Stone, Sylvester Stallone, and of course, Christopher Walken all play supporting roles.
4 The Deer Hunter (94%)
This is the movie that won Christopher Walken the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It’s one of the greatest movies about the Vietnam War, because it’s not just about the conflict; it’s about the soldiers who got drafted to fight in it. We meet three regular joes making an honest living in middle America who suddenly get shipped off to war. The movie only spends about 20 minutes of its three-hour runtime in the actual war. The rest is dedicated to showing the devastating effects that it had on its veterans. Christopher Walken, for example, stays in Vietnam to play Russian roulette.
3 TIE: Catch Me If You Can (95%)
Steven Spielberg directed this biopic of Frank Abagnale, Jr., the infamous con man who got hired by a hospital, a law firm, and an airline when he was still a teenager. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Abagnale, while Tom Hanks plays the FBI agent on his tail. In a sense, Catch Me If You Can is a cat-and-mouse caper, but it also has a sharp sense of humor, playing Abagnale’s cons for laughs. Christopher Walken plays Abagnale’s father, Frank Abagnale, Sr., who is proud of how successful his son becomes, despite the illicit means through which he has gained that success.
2 TIE: The Jungle Book (95%)
Disney’s live-action remake of The Jungle Book was one of the rare cases in the Mouse House’s barrage of photorealistic carbon copies of their animated classics where the remake actually improved upon the original. Unfortunately, this was no thanks to Christopher Walken’s performance.
He played the ape King Louie, who only appears briefly in the original. He’s involved in one of the original’s most iconic musical numbers, singing with his monkey minions and eventually with Mowgli and Baloo. However, for the remake, director Jon Favreau indulged Walken with a long, unwieldy solo. It stops the movie dead and, frankly, doesn’t sound great.
1 Annie Hall (97%)
Perhaps the greatest romantic comedy ever made, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall toys with convention by announcing that the central couple will eventually break up in the opening moments, but its message is ultimately that love is an essential part of life, even though it can be tough and painful sometimes. Christopher Walken has a supporting role in the movie as Duane Hall, although he wasn’t a big star yet, and his name is misspelt “Christopher Wlaken” in the end credits. It’s hard to imagine such an error happening today. Walken appears in the scene in which Alvy meets Annie’s family.
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