Apparently, the Sir William Walker that Marlon Brando plays in this film isn't quite THE Sir William Walker! Let me explain. Walker was a real person who bore SOME similarity to the character in the film. However, the film took HUGE liberties with the guy's life. Instead of being an American, they make him British (which is odd--why not have Brando do a big stretch and just play an American?! Perhaps Brando just ADORED doing accents or he forgot his American one!) and a man who is indifferent towards or perhaps a bit anti-slavery in sentiments. However, Walker actually was practically the patron saint of slavers and fomented revolutions during the 19th century in order to re-institute slavery into Central America! Talk about not getting it right!! This is like doing a film where Santa hates children or General MacArthur is a pacifist!! This is a shame, as this real-life rogue would make a marvelous character in a movie as he led an amazingly colorful, albeit evil and self-serving life. And, in fact, they DID do such a film years later. "Walker", starring Ed Harris, claims to be the actual bio-pic of the guy and "Burn" is only very, very superficially his life story. Sadly, "Walker" is a terrible film--and despite the film saying it's all true...it isn't.
How the film does get it right is that Walker was a professional trouble-maker. He literally bounced from one tiny country to another fomenting revolution for kicks--and in some cases in an attempt to make himself el Presidente for life. But, the film gets it wrong because much of his motivation in "Burn" is simply to destabilize Britain's enemies. And, frankly, this makes no sense because he WASN'T British and because by the 19th century no one really cared much about destabilizing Portugal. The reason they picked on poor Portugal in the and its colonies in the film is because the Spanish-speaking folks where they filmed the movie didn't like the idea that it might make Hispanics look bad--so they made the baddies Portuguese! Obviously historical accuracy was not terribly important to the filmmakers.
If you ignore the historical mess that is this film, is it worth seeing? Yes, but it certainly is a bit muddled. The film is supposed to be about the evils of colonialism and later in the film it shows Walker actually regretting his actions in using a proud black man as his pawn. While this was a pretty interesting twist, the real Walker was a selfish jerk. My feeling is that if the film had been 100% fictional, it would have worked so much better. In addition, the pacing was a bit too slow, Brando's performance a bit too restrained and the music mind-numbingly repetitive. Overall, it's an interesting film but hardly a must-see.
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