Ordinary he’s the kind of actor you associate with sweaty temperatures, tough guy adversaries and save-the-town spiel.   He exposed the esoteric evils of The Skulls, revved against Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious, escaped a psycho on the highway in Roadkill, chased Billy Connolly and the space time continuum in Timeline and sunk a drug cartel in Into the Blue.  Action star Paul Walker, abetted by glowing skin, rodeo good looks and a general consensus of well-pooled gene cells, is under no false pretences about the kind of work he does in Hollywood.  “The movies I am typically drawn to,” he tells me, lips curved somewhere between a smirk and a Kodak grin, “are the ones that involve smacking people on the side of the head with a gun.”

This kind of no-frills wisdom obviously comes from a Hollywood player who clearly understands his position on the field.  Why, then, does Walker’s latest film Eight Below reflect a very different set of criteria for the swimsuit-friendly star?  Beaches, bikinis and sun rays have been replaced by Antarctica’s vast icy wonderland.  Tough guy adversaries are gone too, their shoes to be filled by Mother Nature’s capable impositions.  The save-the-town spiel more or less remains intact, edified by a twist of canine courtship: this film is about saving pooches, not people.  It is also a Disney production, inbred with the Big Mouse’s fabled family-friendly appeal.  

Based on actual events and inspired by the 1983 Japanese movie Nankyoku Monogatari (‘Antarctica’), Eight Below tells a warming story of against-the-odds survival.  Jerry Shepherd (Walker) and his crew of Antarctic explorers and scientists are forced to abruptly abandon their post when a bad storm transforms it into a blustery occupational health and safety hazard.  They leave their dogs there, chained obediently together - six of the finest, responsible for routinely pulling their sled and saving their lives.  The crew intends to return when the storm subsides - alas, it doesn’t, and instead the canine brotherhood is challenged to survive the area’s worse weather in 25 years.

It isn’t difficult to imagine how the real story differs from its Hollywood workout.  Disney isn’t in the business of killing off cute animals (descendants of the Bambi clan may argue the point), so it isn’t likely that any pooch is going to be staring down the barrel of a hard goodbye.  Eight Below is unashamedly predictable but still engaging to watch; the story has been Disneyified but not in a bad way. 

In Melbourne for a brief publicity tour Walker’s eyes twinkle from high up in Crown Towers as he tells me about a massive weekend in Sydney.  “I went everywhere,” he says.  “And I paid the price too!  I had a good time.  It’s not hard (travelling by yourself).  I went out by myself and people are pretty friendly, so it’s easy to get in the midst and find a group of people to throw a couple back with.”

Walker is quite right: it’s easy to make friends when you’re a movie star.  I find it secretly reassuring to discover that he suffers from hangovers just like the rest of us, although I have no real reason to be bitter: the genetic makeup required for those pursuing a career in film journalism is of a slightly less salubrious variety.   Nevertheless I can’t help but feel guiltily consoled by Walker’s weekend laments.  “I had a good time, but I paid the price viciously man.  Come Monday I was still feeling it.  I’m Irish and German, I thought that I could go toe-to-toe but it’s hard to keep up with the Aussies.”

Indeed, many a noble liver has exploded trying.  Walker’s arrival in Melbourne narrowly missed the green-and-gold furore on display at the Commonwealth Games, something I mention while exchanging sports small talk with a man in the elevator who I later realize is Eight Below director Frank Marshall, a Hollywood vet whose esteemed CV includes producing Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and The Bourne Identity as well as directing Arachnophobia, Alive and Congo.

It’s unusual, I say, for an action man to suddenly find himself in a Disney picture.   “At first I didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” Walker says, “when I heard what it was about and that sort of thing.  Sled dogs and the snow.  The first thing I thought of was that Cuba Gooding Jnr. movie (Snow Dogs) and I thought hey it’s already been done, who wants to do that?   It came with an offer, but that typically isn’t enough to inspire me to read anything.  (But) for whatever reason I decided to give the script a go.  I really liked it.  I was surprised.”

In the film the dogs – played by a range of similar looking huskies and malamutes – contribute surprisingly affecting performances capable of displaying emotions as real as any human's.  I interpreted the film as definitive proof that Walker must be a dog person and not a cat person, a point he affirms with a prepared anecdote.  “I appreciate both,” he says, “but this is the way I break it down to people. 

“With a cat if somebody breaks into your house and begins to club you to death the cat is not gonna do a damn thing about it, and then the cat is gonna lap up your blood once the intruder is gone.  A dog on the other hand, even if it’s a Chihuahua is gonna have a go at the guy.  So for that reason alone I’m a dog person.”

Fair enough.  In the context of Paul Walker’s film repertoire that logic – to borrow from Nicholas Cage in Face Off – “fits like a condom.”  It seems perfectly appropriate that a man of Walker’s stature prefers to pat a mountain dog rather than tickle a pussycat.  It is more appropriate still that his other recently completed film was performed under the tutelage of one of the greatest tough guys the cinema has ever known.  Walker’s supporting role in The Flags of our Fathers, released later this year, exposed him to the brilliance of Clint Eastwood. 

“He’s what you’d hope he’d be, basically,” says Walker.  “Sometimes you kind of go into these things protecting yourself.  You just assume that he couldn’t match up to what you were hoping.  But he does. 

“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re at, he treats everybody the same.  I think that is the best way to gauge somebody.  Yeah sure he’s a great director and I’ve grown up on his movies but unless you’re a half decent person it doesn’t really mean a whole lot.”

 

By Luke Buckmaster

Eight Below released nationally April 20, 2006