Walter Hill, 84, one of the most underrated directors of the ‘70s and ‘80s, will receive a much-deserved accolade when, on April 14, the Writers Guild of America West honors him with its 2024 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.
Despite his films not being well-met at the time, Hill has been the subject of a great deal of reappraisal in the form of “international retrospectives, a comprehensive critical study by Walter Chaw, and abundant special edition physical media releases loaded with thoughtful analyses of his work”.
Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn and Sean Baker, have all acknowledged Hill’s influence on their work.
However, Hill, who hasn’t released a film since 2022’s “Dead For A Dollar,” isn’t done yet. He’s telling IndieWire that he’s already preparing to direct his next film and is looking to making a few more after that:
When they give you a lifetime achievement award, it is kind of obligatory that you say, ‘Wait a minute, it’s not over. I’m still working. It always sounds like the end of the trail. But I like to look forward, not back. I’m much more interested in my next screenplay than I am in my last one. My last one [“Dead for a Dollar”] was a Western, and now I’m going back to film noir, and I hope to make a couple more. So the beat goes on.
Having started around the same time as Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg, within the ‘70s New Hollywood movement, Hill is a lesser known name, but one steeped in a filmography that’s influenced many decades of cinema.
It’s complicated explaining how Hill operates. His films are highly stylized, but also stripped down. The blueprint in almost all of them follows the western formula, but most don’t take place in a western setting. Hill also operates with unpretentious means, sometimes to extreme extents, and his best films turn out to be endlessly entertaining.
Despite artistic dry spells in the 21st century, Hill’s managed to put together a strong overall filmography — tops for me are “The Long Riders,” “Hard Times,” “The Warriors,” and “The Driver.” Not too far behind: “48 hrs,” “Southern Comfort,” and “Streets of Fire.”