There’s not a ton of times when I’ve really picked a movie because of specific events during the course of me doing these reviews - heck, even when I felt bad about calling them reviews since I don’t really feel like I’m doing a professional enough job. Nowadays I’m just too lazy to care and call them what they are, but even though we’ve lost countless actors to the inevitable march of time through my movie-watching life span, there is one that make me feel obligated to go back and have some nostalgia for with the bad news. Chuck Norris was one of my favorites growing up - sure, he was super cool and did martial arts which any young Power Rangers loving kid would think was awesome, but he also looked a lot like my dad to me so there was that added level of mental coolness. With all of that, I knew I had to come back and do one of his movies this week - narrowing it down theoretically should have been a hard one, since he’s had an absolute ton of fun movies, but there’s one that I had in mind that I was pretty sure I hadn’t already touched here. It has adventure. It has whimsey. It has jump kicks and swagger - tonight we go back for the Firewalker.

Look, I’ll put it out there right out the get go - it’s kinda a bit dated right? Smoking up a storm, not exactly the most respectful interactions in regards to women or native witch doctors, drinking enough to sink a small sailboat and plenty of fights. That aside, it’s not the most egregious thing out there, and for any complaints I could make for it’s dated representation at times, it never actually comes off feeling like it’s intentionally mean spirited about it. I’ll come back to this in a moment, but let’s get to the story proper shall we? A pair of treasure hunters get into and escape some trouble, which leads to them meeting a pretty blonde lady whose a bit weird but has a map that she is super sure leads to gold. The fact it leads to gold is reinforced when some random person tries to kill them with a crossbow, so off our trio goes in search of the gold. The adventures lead a pretty far and dangerous path, and romance might even be hiding in the tree-filled jungles.

It’s a straight forward plot. It follows the beats you would expect, with the same payout you would expect for a movie of it’s time - it’s oriented towards being good fun even if at times it might be a bit more dark than you realize. The actors can have a bunch to do with this, but also will be a pretty hardy “mileage will vary” situation. For the most part I think everyone here is doing a fine job, nothing that I would particularly call bad on display - but there is some level of caveat to that. The “not bad” can be pretty goofy at times, and the reason I don’t think it’s bad is just because I think that’s what the movie was aiming for. Our lead lady is a great example of this, as at times her face can seem a little confused as to what it was going for when emoting - but at the same time, she brings plenty of enjoyable and goofy energy to the movie. Think Temple of Doom, but with less annoying complaining parts for a lady comparison. The three leads have a great time bantering back and forth with plenty of chemistry - but at the same time I also don’t think most of it is something that you would write down as the highest point of any of their careers.

Characters play into that some I imagine, as does just the general writing and what was wanted out of the movie. The leads get plenty to do and have fun with, although largely on the line of goofy and comedic antics, but most the side characters are there for their bit and gone. Be it bad guy, incompetent bad guy, pervy bad guy, or just random folks. I also won’t say that most of those character really get much outside of what could nowadays be considered “harmful stereotypes.” Case in point, you do get a classic evil witch doctor type as the villain that wants to get god like power in there, to be coupled with our lead lady being a bit of a mind-controlled or generic lady character at times. That said, you also have her doing some genuinely useful stuff that isn’t just being the love interest and rescue subject, and not once in the entire movie does it ever really call attention to the fact that one of our leads isn’t even white - so for any negative points it has some positives. It even has a bit of a war-monger character that you’ll meet at one point that leads to a bit of a dark thinkers moment as well as a good sort of witch doctor to help balance out the evil one - although I guess that in it’s own right could be seen in a bad light through a modern eye, but to me the point is the characters are here to let me have fun and I did, but I don’t think enough when watching movies that I really care to put much thought into it.

Now that I got that long ramble out of the way - you know what else you get with Chuck Norris movies? Action! There’s some fights, there’s some chases, some martial arts and even some gun fights. Heck, there’s even an explosions in the start! Okay, yeah, it doesn’t come off as the highest budget movie ever out there, but what’s here is still pretty decent. Costumes are pretty varied although also largely fit into that adventure movie category. I would say the fanciest thing would be the handful of bow and knife wielding warriors that show up in the tomb - although I’m still not entirely clear if they were supposed to be modern (to the movie) Aztec warriors or just some random unsavory types dressed up as natives for extra attempted spookiness. There’s definitely some mysticism stuff in there too, with plenty of chanting and women who shape shift into snakes off screen, and some mind control style stuff.

Audio is okay. Music is fine - but I think the balance could be better here. The range between “that’s loud” and “that’s quiet’ is way off compared to a lot of the stuff I have watched recently, and although I wasn’t exactly ever missing what someone said because of an action scene or anything like that, there was certainly parts where I wanted to turn it down a bit just to turn it back up a bit to better hear other parts. Plenty of background noises exist to help sell that you aren’t on a set most the time as well, so that’s fun. There’s comedy in the movie, of course always subjective to how fun that is, but I’d chuckle now and then whilst overall having a decent time. Not all those jokes are necessarily “family appropriate”, but PG was a different rating back in the day then it is now, and it’s not like anything is too overly explicit - both in lines or violence levels.

Video quality can be a bit grainy. Part of that is my fault I’m sure - I’m watching a movie from 1986 that’s probably DVD quality (that’d be 480 for those that like numbers) or no better than Blu-ray (1080) on a projector that’s set up for 4k (effectively four times a blu-ray). That being said, the movie looks pretty decent for the most part - it’s really just noticing all that grain jump around that calls it out at all, and part of that very well could just be the film stock they used when making the movie, and those little grains carrying through to some up-rezzing and the likes. The effects and camera work all come off fine even if it’s a bit simple at times, so no real complaints outside that just mentioned grain. For the thinking types, I think there is probably a surprising amount of semi-dark things you could dwell on in this movie to pan it out into some kind of thoughtful discussion. It’s not really my jam, but that added extra emphasis on the “do you think you’ll see him again” end of the one scene really feels extra potent, like it just wants you to think about the most likely morbid outcome for a man so drawn to fighting. Past that, you also get the paranormal side of things you could dwell on, as well as some bits about treatment of natives (or women for that matter, although I think the women part comes less from intent necessarily and more from retrospectively watching the movie from it’s future).

It’s a fun time. I’m not going to make the argument that all modern viewers would love it - but for an adventure flick that also happens to have Chuck Norris in it, it’s a good time. He can do jokes, he can do action, he can have swagger. He can work as a team, and although yes he’s the main macho fight fella for the movie excluding perhaps the main villain when he finally gets to have a fight, the movie really wouldn’t be as much fun if the female lead was more annoying or he didn’t have his good old adventuring buddy there to keep him straight and “out of trouble.” It’s the friendly dynamic between them all that really helps make the movie and shenanigans they get into fun, and although you only see Chuck and Lou on that box art all three of them provide some of the charm to the movie. The storyline is kinda basic, and the characters themselves aren’t necessarily something that feels deep as the ocean - but it does a wonderful job of fitting the charm of the adventure movie without making you really hate any of the main characters - and if you watch enough adventure movies, sometimes that can be it’s own breed of magic.

@IMDB

Firewalker (1986)