Bad men led by Rawley Wilkes (David Carradine) are smuggling guns across the border.
McQuade finds out.
Guess what happens next…
I do not have much familiarity with Chuck Norris’s work - before this I had watched Invasion USA and Silent Rage. I had heard good things about a couple of Norris’s other vehicles, and I wanted to see him at his best.
Lone Wolf McQuade is a pretty fun action movie. The plot is a little complicated, but the action is solid and the filmmakers pick interesting settings for each set piece.
Notable as the first time he wore the beard, Lone Wolf McQuade stands out for how it tries to pay homage to spaghetti westerns. McQuade feels like an 80s riff on Eastwood’s iconic loner. The most overt reference is the film’s score, which evokes Ennio Morricone so much I am surprised he did not do it (Francesco De Masi did the honours).
The attempt to make Norris a loner badass is only partially successful - he looks great with the beard and the jeans. The filmmakers want to make him out as a beer-chugging, messy outsider who is disinterested in comfort or presentation, but Norris is so inherently square that it does not quite work - his onscreen awkwardness makes him believable as a loner, just not the kind the filmmakers want.
This movie works in spite of Norris - he cannot react to anything unless it is an action scene, which is good for this movie. If Norris was playing Macbeth…
The other reason Norris does not bump is that the cast is filled out with actors (Robert Beltran and LQ Jones) who can draw attention from the star. David Carradine preens as the villain - he has not got a lot to work with, but he knows what the role is and fills it out with understated swagger.
The only performer who is in a similar boat to Norris is Barbara Carrera. Most well known as the villain from Never Say Never Again, she plays McQuade’s love interest. It is not a well-written part and she does not have a lot to do, but she is doing more than Norris, and perversely, this means her wooden moments stick out more than his do.
The worst thing about the movie is that falls into the same hole of featuring a villain defined by some kind of impairment. Daniel Frishman plays Emilio Falcon, a Mexican gang boss who uses a wheelchair and crosses paths with McQuade throughout the film. Frishman has a great voice and plays his scenes with a smug glee - he feels a missing James Bond villain. But he ultimately adds nothing to the movie, other than serving as a contrast to McQuade. Their verbal sparring basically amounts to Norris throwing insults at his foe’s height and mobility.
To be honest, the movie would be better without any dialogue. All the attempts to complicate the movie are pointless because it is obvious who the bad guy is and what they are doing. Norris is only dynamic when he is in action, and when the movie focuses on that, it is successful. But while it is not perfect, compared with the other Norris movies I have seen, this movie is a miracle.
I left the movie more a fan of Carradine and Frishman, but Lone Wolf McQuade is solid action cheese.
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