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Q. I got a chuckle out of the Movie Glossary entry titled "The Walk." This shot, of the characters lined up and walking meaningfully toward the camera, became so hackneyed it was used three times in each and every episode of the reality TV game show "Fear Factor."
The earliest film I can think of to use "The Walk" is "A Clockwork Orange," as Malcolm McDowell and his gang walk along the harbor, just before McDowell attacks his gangmates. Both the director, the late Stanley Kubrick, and the film seem like likely places for other filmmakers to draw their influences.
Before I saw Tarantino's "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," I would have said the last time this shot was effective or looked cool was in his "Reservoir Dogs." In "Kill Bill," it seemed to me that both the music and the motion were noticeably faster paced than normal for "The Walk." How is it that Tarantino manages to take an element so familiar and make it his own and so seemingly original?
Nick Fovargue, Toronto
A. There's something so quirky and personal about Tarantino's style that even when he's ripping off an old movie, you say "That's a Tarantino shot!" As I tirelessly repeat, it's not what the film is about, but how it's about it. By the way, film critic Peter Debruge claims an earlier Walk in "The Wild Bunch," as shown on the poster.