If I hadn’t seen him beat up the nihilists,* I’d suspect he was a blowhard who greatly exaggerated his exploits.
But he turned out to be a genuine tough guy, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.
The movie turned 20 on March 6! So The Washington Post went back to movie critics who hated it when it first came out: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2018/03/06/the-big-lebowski-is-20-we-reached-out-to-the-critics-who-panned-it-to-see-what-they-think-now/?utm_term=.559252ece4af
I was initially turned off by the idiot critics I read and didn’t see it until it came out on cable. How could those people have been so wrong?
Anyway: Walter.
I’ve generally leaned towards served in Vietnam but not combat at best. And that’s a bit of a stretch.
I knew some Vietnam vets back in college and elsewhere. One very common thing at that time was that none of them wanted to talk about it. At least the combat side. You might hear stories about bars in Saigon and such, but not about the shooting.
It was common to let people know: “Joe’s a Vietnam vet. Don’t ask him anything about it.”
Now, TBL is set a few years later but not far enough along to where these guys would be all that talkative about it.
While the fight scene with the nihilists makes some good points, all the other babbling (esp. Donny’s funeral) just strikes me as tellingly off. No real vet I knew would have gone on like that.
Even now, there’s a guy in the locker room who likes to talk about his long jungle forays near Laos and how stupid the officers were. Coupled with other bragging level stuff sets off my caution bells.
Exactly. That’s how my father was/is. He’ll talk about the strip bars in Saigon, or about getting high and throwing pizzas on the wall (or weird shit like that), but no combat stories.
As to the bit about the critics who hated the movie when it first came out: I also saw it in the theatre on its release. I really did not enjoy the movie. Maybe it’s because my film major roommate oversold it or something, but I just did not like it. I saw it a couple years later with some friends just at a party at their house and had no idea why I disliked the movie initially. It was laugh-out-loud funny as shit. It remains one of maybe a dozen movies at most that I’ve watched more than a couple of times. Which reminds me, I’m due to watch it again.
I saw it with a friend in the theater in its first run, in my late teens. My friend wasn’t impressed, but I thought it was amazing.
He was in his element.
I think it’s one of these movies you have to see more than once to truly appreciate. I didn’t hate it when I first saw it, but I didn’t really like or understand it either. Some people persuaded me to give it another chance, and I’m really glad I did. Even today, after countless viewings, I’m still seeing tiny little things I’d been missing.
For instance, one thing I never picked up on was when The Dude confronts the detective, Da Fino (Jon Polito) and Da Fino, who thinks The Dude is a “brother shamus,” starts praising him for playing both sides against each other. Of course, Jon Polito played the mobster Johnny Caspar in* Miller’s Crossing*, leader of one of the two gangs Gabriel Byrne played against each other.
Of possible interest to fans, here’s a clip discussing the restoration work done on the film.
Mortimer Young from Forever Young Films–restoring The “Grand” Lebowski
True, but how much does Walter talk about being in combat?
I liked it very much when I first saw it in 1998, and that has blossomed into love in the three or four times I’ve seen it since.
Walter is too much a man of action to have not been active in 'Nam, if he was there. Nothing happens in the whole story that isn’t driven by his urge to right some wrongs. He convinces the Dude to track down Lebowski. He comes up with the plan for the Dude to do a phony handoff and keep the ransom money. Walter tracks down Larry Sellers and takes the Dude to interrogate him and subsequently assaults the Corvette.
And, in contrast to his aggressive response to the nihilists, totally wimps out when the owner of the Corvette comes out, screams at him and easily takes the crowbar from him (at 2:01 here): A scene from The Big Lebowski - YouTube. I’d like to think it’s because Walter recognizes he was in the wrong.
I don’t take his action or inaction in violent situations as any sign of whether he was or was not in combat in Vietnam. There’s no reason the guy can’t be making up/exaggerating shit and just be a violent psychopath itching for a fight (see the “over the line” scene.)
Exactly. What fuels Walter’s rage is people not following the “rules”. When Walter realized he was smashing an innocent person’s car, he wilted.
“Do you see what happens, Larry? Do you see what happens …” 
"Just because we’re bereaved doesn’t make us SAPS!
It is our most modestly priced receptacle."
“GOD-DAMMIT!”
I think the writers were smart to add the element of warfare to Walter’s character. True or not, his unhinged behavior is only reinforced by the expectation that he may have some psychological scars.