I Am Paul Walker (2018) - Movie Review

The plot (such as it is): Born in Glendale, California, Paul Walker IV was known as a thrill-seeker, an oddball and a heartthrob. He went from acting in bit parts in his youth to being the lead in one of the most high-profile action franchises in modern cinema. Through interviews with those closest to him, we see a deeper picture of the man, who he is, why he did the things he did and, ultimately, how he has been remembered since his passing.

The interview footage this time around is very fixated on the subject’s family, particularly his brothers Cody and Caleb, his sister Ashlie and his parents Cheryl and Paul. Throughout their footage, it seems like everyone in attendance is at varying stages of just bursting into tears right on-camera. It gives the film a rather open-wound feel to it, like an event that no amount of years would help the scar tissue to close over. The result of this is that, as we see Paul’s family, his friends, his co-stars and his manager Matt Luber recollect what they saw Paul to be during his lifetime, this feels like something that had to be filmed. Like a form of cinematic closure, a chance for unattended-to mourning to take place. It leaves the film with a very heavy feeling, even when looking at the brighter days of Paul’s youth growing up in California, that honestly fits the tone of how Paul’s exit from this world left a lot of moviegoers feeling.

Now, even though I will always admit to having great adoration to the Fast & Furious films that gave Paul his major break in Hollywood, I also admit that the man has never wowed me that much as an actor. Well, an easy way for that to be remedied is for a film like this to basically contextualise how that filmography played off of how he was as a person, similar to how Jim & Andy looked at Jim Carrey’s career. Looking through his career as a child actor during the 80’s, and even his heartthrob days in the 90’s, it’s difficult to really separate the stereotypical Cali surfer dude from the roles he would take.

 

And that ends up being a good thing, since it gives his films a sense of grounding that has them make a bit more sense, Rob Cohen’s The Skulls especially. Not only is this highlighted as the point where Paul as an actor started to truly come into his own (and looking at the footage used, even I find that hard to argue with), watching Cohen himself describe how he directed Paul in his scenes and their initial work on the first Fast & Furious movie, it feels like a crucial moment for both of them. I’ve talked before about Cohen’s rather try-hard second adolescence in filmmaking that started around this time, but this is the first time I’ve actually gotten a real idea on why that happened. Seems like a bit of Paul’s infectious spirit must have rubbed off on the guy.

Not that this film focuses strictly on his acting career. In fact, much to the film’s benefit, it delves into the surprisingly layered facets of the man’s life to give a more panoramic view of who he is. And it turns out that who he is is someone worth remembering this fondly. His love for all things adrenaline-fuelled, often using that pastime to get away from the pressures of his life as an actor, his particular affinity for surfing and diving that eventually led him to working with marine biologists, even his connection to motorsports and his rather enviable collection of cars; it all adds connective tissue to make Paul out to be more than just a film star. Hell, if anything, it portrays it like his acting career is far from the most interesting thing about the guy.

 

But there’s one moment that ends up clinching that, that being the depiction of his work with Reach Out Worldwide, specifically what he did during the 2010 Haitian earthquake. While the archive footage is at its most sparse here, listening to firefighter and volunteer David Marquez talk about how Paul basically dropped everything to get over to Haiti and help with the relief effort, it’s a surprisingly cinematic moment. The air given to his actions and how he used his monetary status to pull them off make this moment feel like something that, a few years down the track, could be made into its own movie. He’s such an action hero, even his real life exploits qualify.

But honestly, beyond any of this, the big thing that makes this film so bloody effective is how it focuses on the ideal of family. Not just in the respect of having the Walkers giving their perspectives on Paul himself, but also in how everyone considered him outside of blood relation. I mentioned before how Paul could very well have given Rob Cohen his frequently-embarrassing surge of energy during the 2000’s, but more accurately, he is basically the soul of the franchise that thrust him into stardom: The Fast & The Furious. Watching this documentary, seeing everyone from the Walkers to Tyrese Gibson regarding this man as such a focal point in their lives, it really ends up echoing a lot of the bigger aspirations towards family and brotherhood that would take Fast & Furious into its greatest moments… including the one where it officially said goodbye to Paul.

 

That last one is a real sticking point for me as, over the course of this film, it felt like I was reliving that collective sense of mourning our culture went through when the news hit that he had died. This is only furthered by the Walkers' recollections of that specific day, when the dam finally breaks and all that weeping starts to surface. Seeing the man’s life given this much context, wanting to detail just how much he meant to those around him, honestly makes me even sadder that he’s gone than I was when it actually happened. Not gonna lie, even considering the documentaries I’ve covered on here from Amy to Montage Of Heck, this is the first time one of these films has actively left me feeling bad that the person highlighted is no longer with us. Amy came really damn close, but not as close as this.

All in all, even as someone who always felt a bit ‘meh’ on Paul Walker as an actor, this is an impressively moving look at his life and what made him who he is. The interview footage combined with the archived home video footage of Paul’s youth give an unshakeable sense that this is someone who meant to lot to a lot of people, the framing of his life not only stretched beyond his work as an actor but also manages to contextualise an impressive amount of his work on and off-screen with commendable clarity, and as a snapshot of someone at the centre of a pretty widespread sense of loss, something that would only be matched by the mortal onslaught of 2016, it gives a definite idea on why people mourned him as they did. This is definitely going to hit harder for those who are fans of his work, which admittedly includes myself, but… if you’re in need of a good cry over the loss of someone worth mourning, you’re sure to find that here and then some.