To honor the late action hero, we’re looking back at one of his best movies.
Every Chuck Norris fan has a favorite Chuck Norris movie.
For many, Code of Silence — the 1985 film-noirish thriller directed by Andrew Davis (The Fugitive) featuring Norris as a straight-arrow police sergeant clashing with crooked cops and cocaine traffickers — is the absolute cream of the crop.
Others might choose any or all of the flicks in the 1984-88 Missing in Action franchise, or The Delta Force (1986), which memorably paired Norris with Lee Marvin as leaders of a Special Ops team assigned to rescue passengers aboard a Boeing 707 hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
And yes, there probably are a few — very few, but a few nonetheless — who fondly recall Top Dog, a seriocomic action opus in which Norris’ maverick cop reluctantly teamed with a K-9 partner to track down neo-Nazi terrorists bent on celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday with a big bang in San Diego. (Unfortunately, the inadvertent bad timing of the movie’s release — less than two weeks after the horrific 1995 Oklahoma City bombing — worked against its commercial success.)
For my money, though, the very best movie ever to topline Chuck Norris — who passed away March 19 at age 86 — is Lone Wolf McQuade, the rousingly exciting 1983 neo-western action-adventure that kinda-sorta “inspired” Norris’ long-running Walker, Texas Ranger TV series, and effectively scuffed up the clean-cut image that the Oklahoma-born martial-artist-turned-actor had maintained in such earlier star vehicles as An Eye for an Eye (1981) and Forced Vengeance (1982).
Indeed, Norris spends most of his time in Lone Wolf McQuade looking like something the cat dragged in, examined closely, then tossed back outside. Sweaty, unshaven, and generally grungy, he lives in a hovel decorated with dust, unwashed dishes and mountains of empty beer cans. Even his truck, a gimmick-loaded Dodge Ram, is a mess. If this movie had been made in Smell-O-Vision, people would have come out of movie theaters reeking of Right Guard or Air Wick.
But, bless his heart, Norris is still on the side of the angels here. He’s a Texas Ranger no less, a modern-day maverick named — what else? — J.J. “Lone Wolf” McQuade. His superiors complain about his methods and his estranged wife carps about his obsessive dedication. But McQuade gets results. And he always gets his man.
Of course, there often isn’t much left of the man when McQuade is through. That’s because McQuade, like almost all other characters Norris ever essayed for the silver screen, speaks softly and carries a big kick. The one-time World Middleweight Karate Champion doesn’t always pound the pulp out of villains as he takes his distinctive approach to Lone Star law enforcement. But when the situation calls for it, he can still practice his martial artistry like a master.
Early on in Lone Wolf McQuade, which was filmed in and around El Paso, Texas, our hero is temporarily held prisoner by Mexican horse rustlers. But longtime Norris watchers then and now know just what to expect. And, sure enough, he doesn’t disappoint us. One quick kick and the chief rustler is ready to be fitted for dentures.
There’s lots of unsurprising but impressive excitement in Lone Wolf McQuade, a hugely enjoyable popcorn flick seasoned with Sergio Leone-style tropes that marked a quantum leap forward in Norris’ film career. Indeed, it was designed to attract every possible segment of the action-movie market, since McQuade, for all his grime, is a white-bread WASP. His partner (Robert Beltran) is a Mexican-American, and his closest ally, a federal agent (Leon Isaac Kennedy), is black.
And for those who go to action movies, or any other kind of movie, just to watch girls, we have Nicaraguan-born Barbara Carrera. She provides the romantic interest as a lovely widow who, though wealthy, appears unwilling to spend on a brassiere.
If you can suspend disbelief — nay, if you can expel it completely — you can have tons of fun with this two-fisted escapism. Norris had been steadily improving as an actor by the time he made Lone Wolf McQuade, and his performance in the title role is properly authoritative. It is something of a relief for his fans that, even when the script calls for him to grieve for his murdered pet wolf, he does not look silly at all.
The plot, dealing with McQuade’s pursuit of international gun smugglers, is stuffed with clichés but moves briskly and arrestingly. The fight scenes are well-staged, although the climactic battle — pitting Norris against one-time Kung Fu star David Carradine — lacks a fully satisfying conclusion. Carradine reportedly had it guaranteed in his contract that Norris couldn’t whip him. (What a wimp!) But, of course, there are plenty of other ways to ensure a bad guy’s quietus.
Steve Carver’s direction is far more assured and stylish here than in An Eye for an Eye, his previous collaboration with Norris. Just as important, the people who made this movie know enough not to take things too seriously. The first half in particular is rich with satirical touches, as Norris is repeatedly lit and photographed to look like a 1990s version of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. Even the overbearing musical score, with its emphasis on melancholy whistling and booming organ riffs, recalls the hyped-up melodramatics of a mid-1960s spaghetti western.
Reality rarely extends its troublesome head into this fantasyland enterprise. McQuade blows away scads of suspects in gunfights but never has to file reports or notify his superiors about the corpses he’s left in his wake. Bad guys dump tons of earth atop McQuade and his truck; McQuade merely shifts into second gear and zooms to the surface. Cowabunga!
We don’t believe any of this for a second — but, really, we’re not supposed to. Lone Wolf McQuade is one of the best rock-the-house Saturday-night movies you could ask for on any day of the week.
And it is an altogether fitting tribute to our favorite Bearded Ninja.
