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I believe the first time I ever saw Paul Walker in a movie was the 1998 movie Pleasantville as the well-meaning captain of the basketball team stereotype (intentional) and I mainly recall just him as fitting into the world. He was also in She’s All That but to be honest, I mainly remember the parody version of his character from Not Another Teen Movie. I didn’t even watch the Fast & Furious movies until the fifth one when The Rock joined them, so I never really had any particular connection to the actor, and I felt he was decent enough in the movies going forward, but not in a way that stood out in the circus of overperformances.
I Am Paul Walker comes from director Adrian Buitenhuis, who also was behind similar documentaries on Sam Kinison and Heath Ledger, so apparently he’s discovered a niche genre of documentaries about actors that died tragically young. The movie is similar to any sort biographical documentary, utilizing a lot of talking heads and home movie footage to tell the story of Paul Walker and how he became a star.
We see interviews from his costar Tyrese Gibson, clearly one of his closer friends on the set, although nothing from some of the other famous people that have acted with him. I don’t know if they didn’t choose or weren’t able to participate or something else, but it does seem that the movie focuses on his family and close friends. But I suppose that’s only right. We do see quite a few from those on the director side like Rob Cohen (who directed the first Fast movie) and James Wan.
Paul is shown growing up in a sort of idyllic manner, the clean cut Mormon family in Southern California, a lover of surf and sun. Two of his childhood friends, Erik MacArthur and Oakley Lehman (who went on to be his stunt double), provide context, shedding light on a kid who wasn’t squeaky clean. He could be tough, getting into fights to defend slights or his friends, and he could be reckless, pursuing adrenaline junkie efforts even into his 30s.
The documentary doesn’t really do anything unique or unusual as it tells this story of him growing up and becoming a star, focusing mostly on his good qualities and charitable efforts, while keeping in the background his tragic death. There is an effective style to this sort of documentary, which is simple — intercut footage with talking heads and leave it at that. The effectiveness is simply that the right interview moments are cut in a coherent style that leaves the movie ending in a way that you had insight into the subject’s life and death.
You can hardly expect his non-actor friends or family to put on airs or be highly well-spoken in a professional way, but the movie does tell this story well. It isn’t quite hagiographic, but I can’t really blame the filmmakers for wanting to present Paul in the best light. It’s not like he was a secret monster, just an actor with a few complexities in his life.
The movie does not take a firm stance on his death; there is no clear lesson to be learned on the ‘why’ which is always dangerous anyway. It therefore is a bit toothless, but again, I cannot blame them for that decision. Nobody expects this to be a hard hitting exposé, but it is precisely what is — a way to tell a story of Paul Walker’s life.
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