The New Paul Walker Documentary Is An Incomplete Look At An Incomplete Life
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There's no "right" way to make a documentary after the untimely death of a celebrity. No matter how much a star made their private life public, there will always be portions of their fanbase whose grief at-a-distance will go largely unresolved β€” which often means their loved ones, famous or not, are called upon to offer some version of their grief to the masses.

"I Am Paul Walker," premiering Saturday, August 11 on the Paramount Network, is mostly reliant on commentary from the "Fast & Furious" franchise star's family. His parents, brothers, sister and uncle carry the documentary, while participants who met Walker through his acting career are the smaller cohort of interviewees. Viewers anticipating a tearful Vin Diesel set to a gut-punch reprise of "See You Again" from the end of "Furious 7" won't find one. With the prolonged public memorial for Walker having been largely framed by his cause of death and its unfortunate correspondence with his most famous role, the documentary is largely content to let Walker's biological family share their little-publicized memories of Walker without suppressing or overhyping the importance of his "Fast & Furious" family.

 

Directed by Adrian Buitenhuis, whose recent credits include two other "I Am" documentaries exploring the lives of actor Heath Ledger and shock comic Sam Kinison, the documentary benefits not just from the Walker family's willingness to share in talking head interviews. A wealth of home video footage reveals that, from the beginning of his career as a child actor through his first few film roles, there were always cameras trained on Walker whether they were an acting gig's or his family's. Buitenhuis heavily relies on supplemental footage to illuminate his "I Am" subjects' lives (previously using self-shot video for Ledger, stand-up footage for Kinison), which perhaps explains why the Walker documentary clocks in at only an hour β€” the home videos seem to dry up once Walker reaches bonafide star-status.

At that point, Walker could begin investing in his hobbies alongside his humanitarian and environmental efforts, and while the former would be a frequent talking point on red carpets, he mostly kept his generous acts under the radar. "I Am Paul Walker" features clips from Walker's television appearances alongside Dr. Michael Domeier, a marine biologist specializing in shark research. Walker wasn't merely a passive host; he'd gamely work alongside Domeier at sea while, unbeknownst to Domeier at the time, donating to his research. In response to the earthquakes that devastated Chile and Haiti in 2010, Walker quietly founded a disaster relief charity called Reach Out Worldwide. While "I Am Paul Walker" tells of how Walker himself traveled to Haiti with his response crew, arranging a helicopter out of the Dominican Republic with Vin Diesel's help, a 2011 snapshot of the charity's site attests to how low-key Walker wanted to keep his involvement. In one of the documentary's more revealing archival footage pulls, Walker chats between takes for a Reach Out Worldwide promo video, insisting that they stick to language that downplayed Walker's role in the organization.

Perhaps predictably, Walker's love of cars gets less screen time in the documentary than his charitable work. Walker was a co-owner of motorsport brand Always Evolving alongside his friend Roger Rodas. Rodas was driving a Porsche Carrera GT with Walker in the passenger seat at the time of the crash that killed both men in November of 2013.

While Netflix's drag racing competition show "Fastest Car" gave fellow Always Evolving collaborator Erik Davis a place to testify to both of his friends' driving abilities, "I Am Paul Walker" resists the morbid temptation to frame Walker's thrill-seeking instinct as tragically unshakable, nor does it devote airtime to the wrongful death lawsuits Rodas' and Walker's families filed against Porsche. At most, the documentary subtly acknowledges Walker's personal driving ability with glimpses of Walker in full race-day safety gear and clips of car stunts he was allowed to perform on film, like the 180Β°-whip-turn-and-reverse move from "2 Fast 2 Furious."

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Tyrese Gibson, who starred alongside Walker in "2 Fast," serves as the documentary's main link to the "Fast" franchise. At first this feels a little odd, especially considering Tyrese's recent entanglement in a messy feud with co-star Dwayne Johnson which itself had roots in a feud between Johnson and series mainstay Vin Diesel. Then again, Tyrese's own personality is not far removed from that of his class-clown "Fast" character Roman Pierce, meaning his cracks about Walker's good looks provide some welcome levity to the documentary. Likewise, his hushed testimony about Walker's behind-the-scenes conduct echo the franchise's admittedly corny refrains about family: Tyrese drops that Walker fought on his behalf for his return to the series, which testifies to how earnest and appropriate Tyrese's inclusion in the documentary is.

If it sounds like the documentary goes to great lengths painting Paul Walker as an impossibly good guy, his family members' interviews are where you can see beneath the movie star sheen. As a teenager, Walker could be easily goaded into a fight; he was far from ready to settle down when longtime girlfriend Rebecca gave birth to their daughter Meadow; both his surfer-dude flightiness and tough-guy grit were, at times, relationship and career liabilities. Past the edges of his family's testimony there are outright omissions: no talk of Walker's later romantic partners, and Meadow β€” who launched an ocean-related philanthropic organization in Walker's memory β€” does not appear in the documentary at all.

The sentiment that Walker's family expresses, and which the documentary ultimately advances, is that Walker was not on a downward swing at the time of his death. A detached or callous look at Walker's life might conclude that his fatal accident was a predictable turn, but his family saw the Paul they knew in private on a course towards balance and happiness. As his younger brother Cody puts it in the documentary, Walker felt like he was just one film away from being able to finally settle into fatherhood and to enjoy what he had accomplished. Really, it seems as though Walker's family was one film away from finding relief. Now, with the catharsis of "I Am Paul Walker" offered up to fans, perhaps they can resume their journeys.​

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