‘Walker’ Is an Amusing Hit in Nicaragua

A film about an American adventurer who took over Nicaragua more than 100 years ago was a box-office flop in the United States, but it has been drawing long lines in Managua.

A downtown movie house has been packed since the film “Walker” opened Feb. 25. That’s an unusual occurrence because the $5 tickets cost more than many workers earn in a day.

Moviegoers said they were curious and eager to see the scenes of Granada, the central colonial city on the shores of Lake Nicaragua where most of the film was shot last year.

The movie, directed by Briton Alex Cox for Universal Pictures, is about William Walker, a 19th-Century American adventurer who is little-known in the United States but featured in every child’s history book in Nicaragua. The satirical film stars Ed Harris as Walker and Academy Award-winner Marlee Matlin as his hearing-impaired wife.

Walker is seen here as the first invader from the United States, the man who started more than 100 years of U.S. intervention and a symbol of Yankee imperialism.

Walker came to Nicaragua in 1855 and after capturing Granada, named himself president the following year. He offered an uneasy warning of today’s friction between Nicaragua and the United States by saying, “We’ll be back, time and time again.”

Walker surrendered to the U.S. Navy in 1857, tried to conquer Central American in 1860 and was finally turned over to Honduras. He was executed by firing squad in 1860.

Reviews so far have been mixed.

Roberto Fonseca wrote in the culture magazine Ventana that the film was “a joke in bad taste.”

“It’s a shame that we lost the opportunity to make a film, a work with instructive and political ends,” Fonseca wrote.

He noted that the film contained unnecessary violence and was “extremely weak not only because of its omissions but--voluntary or not--for its misrepresentations.”

The movie starts out by saying, “This is a true story.”

But reviewers find scores of factual errors, including the wrong presidents at the time in Nicaragua and the United States.

The 20th-Century props used in the film amused the crowd in the Teatro Gonzalez movie house and they broke into laughter when scenes showed contemporary news magazines, a recent model car and a Soviet-made troop helicopter that was supposed to be carrying U.S. government officials.

But Fonseca, in his review, said: “Personally, the misrepresentations don’t make me laugh.”

The pro-government newspaper Nuevo Diario quoted Roberto Cruz, described as a movie enthusiast, as saying the “satire covered up what Walker means in Nicaragua.”

Most of the people at the theater hurried out, chatting among themselves about the film.

“I liked it,” one woman said, pulling the hand of a youngster. “Why? Well, I like the scenes.”

A young man, who said he didn’t want to give his name, said: “I thought it was funny.”

But another spectator, also declining to give his name, said simply, “It was silly.”