Firewalker (1986)

Starring: Chuck Norris, Louis Gossett Jr., John Rhys-Davies, and Mr. Pitt from Seinfeld
Grade: C+

Firewalker is one of the most badass movie titles I’ve ever heard.

Summary

In a sandy desert somewhere, treasure hunters and best friends Max Donigan (Norris) and Leo Porter (Gossett Jr.) are chased by bad guys on dune buggies. Shortly into the chase, Max manages to crash into the only body of water in the entire area, after driving over a dune. Right after, the two are captured. They are tied to stakes and spread out on the ground, just as The General (Richard Lee-Sung) shows up.

The General looks like Fat Joe mixed with Jacob Batalon.

He arrives to talk shit to them and then puts a bottle of water in Max’s hand to tease him, knowing he won’t be able to drink it because him and Leon are both tied up. After the General and the bad guys leave, Max crushes the glass bottle in his hand and uses it to cut the rope on his wrist to break free. He uses the glass shard to cut the rest of the ropes off and does the same for Leo. Afterwards, the two go to a bar they frequent to cool down. This is where Leo decides he wants to quit as a treasure hunter. The two have been on fifteen expeditions in ten years, but they’ve only made money on three of them. Just then, Patricia Goodwin (Melody Anderson) walks into the bar. She’s well-kept and looks like she means business. She asks the bartender for two men that could help her on some mysterious mission. They need to be brave but not too bright. So, the bartender sends her in the direction of Max and Leo. The three sit at a table, and Patricia tells them of this map in her possession that she believes leads to gold. The gold is located somewhere in an Indian reservation near the border. She says she’ll split it with them 50/50, but it will be dangerous. One man in particular has chased Patricia recently for her map. Apparently, he’s not a man though as she describes him as a “red cyclops”. Max and Leo laugh at her unbelievable description and rightfully so. As Patricia shows them the map to prove she’s not messing around, a Native American man from the upper deck of the bar shoots an arrow at them from a crossbow, just barely missing their heads. They escape and the next day, we see them traveling to the location of the Indian reservation.

The trio explore some cave. After seeing a group of skeletons, they stumble into some artifacts deeper inside the place. As they look at some of the things in there, Max picks up a skull. When he starts messing around, the inside of it starts glowing red. Startled, he drops it, and it shatters on the ground. It is revealed that inside of the skull was a golden knife with a red stone on it. As Max and Leo celebrate, Patricia notes that this isn’t the gold she was looking for. Right after, the bad guy from the bar abducts her. Max and Leo run into a few more Native American bad guys and after dispatching them, they chase the main guy to the edge of a big cliff after he laid a knocked-out Patricia down. Max threatens the guy with the special knife, and it scares the guy so much that he jumps off the cliff and kills himself. Clearly, this knife is a lot more than just treasure.

Later, Leo takes a closer look at the knife and sees that it has Mayan and Aztec markings on it. As the three study it that night at some bar, the barkeep tells them about El Coyote (Sonny Landham). He’s an Indian on the reservation that “claims to be descended from an Aztec priest”, but he’s a huge threat to anyone, including his own people. After paying the barkeep for more information, the guy tells them about a shaman named Tall Eagle (Will Sampson) that could help them. They go and see Tall Eagle, and he tells them that to help them, “The Great Spirit” deserves something in return. After a miscommunication between Max and Leo, Max agrees on their behalf to give Tall Eagle, and his people, twenty percent of anything they find if his information pays off. Tall Eagle agrees to this and tells them the story of the “Firewalker”, a man whose soul could fly to the sun to get his power. Apparently, the Spaniards wanted the Firewalker’s gold. Legend says that following this, he flew to the sun to walk in the fire forever. He also says to beware of the “coyote”, probably referring to El Coyote. Frustrated at how little of a lead this was, Max and Leo leave. Patricia stays behind for a second, and Tall Eagle tells her that she will soon speak to many spirits. Some of them are evil. For protection, he gives her a small bag of magic dust. All three go to some hotel and try to figure out their next step. Patricia goes to the map the two are looking at and stabs a knife in San Miguel because it’s right in-between Mayan and Aztec country. However, after she points this out, she passes out in Max’s arms.

That night, a woman visits Max’s room and offers him a potion from Tall Eagle that will protect him from evil. As she tries to seduce him once he drinks it, we go back and forth with El Coyote screaming some chant and holding a snake over a fire. At the same time, we also see Tall Eagle doing some chant as he sweats profusely. Next, we see Max has been knocked out because of the potion and the woman in his room tries to kill him. Patricia wakes up instinctively and runs into Max’s room to stop the girl. As she starts to lose the fight after a little while, Leo comes in and hits the woman, knocking her out. They establish that Max was drugged, but everything is fine with him, with Leo calming Patricia’s nerves before they both call it a night. The woman is then locked in another woman to be questioned in the morning. However, she is gone the next morning, and they all wonder how.

Things are getting fishy around here, but it doesn’t matter. Max is determined and him, Leo, and Patricia all head to San Miguel with the ultimate goal of finding this mysterious treasure at all costs.

My Thoughts:

Chuck Norris was known for his serious action movies in the 80s and 90s, with very little variety in regard to subject matter or tone. This is why Firewalker is worth seeing. It’s a different type of Chuck Norris film and honestly, his movies should’ve been more like this. They probably would’ve been much more successful. Since Chuck looks like such a nice guy, it seems to me that a movie like this fits his actual personality. It’s a light-hearted action-adventure with much more humor than what we’re accustomed to. Is the humor actually funny? Well, there’s a few moments, but nothing to write home about. After seeing action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and eventually Bruce Willis and others, poking fun at their tough guy image, or at least trying to bring in some humor to their roles, it’s nice to see Norris give it a try. Though Norris still plays a tough guy in Firewalker, he jokes around a little bit, and it’s a breath of fresh air for someone that likes to binge Chuck Norris movies like myself.

Does he have a flare for comedic acting like Willis or Schwarzenegger? Not at all, but it was cool to see him try.

You can tell Norris wanted this to be a huge success. Allowing for a more family friendly image could bring in some major money but here, it doesn’t work as much as he wants it too. You can tell he’s learning comedic acting as the movie goes on. His timing is a step too slow. Since this role requires him to have much more of a personality, his range as an actor shows. What is his range you may ask? It’s that of a strait-laced action hero. It looks like he got it right the first time, and Firewalker proves it. I don’t think it was enough to give up on this style of movie though. With better material, he could’ve gotten better at it because let’s be honest, this screenplay wasn’t great either. Chuck isn’t the most emotional actor to begin with so when you write a film like this and expect him to act his heart out and let loose, he’s going to be a bit too rigid with it because this isn’t his natural profession. I love Chuck, but he’s never had discernible acting instincts. Because of this, his attempt at a well-rounded performance wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. What was even worse was in the third act, when he thinks Leo was eaten by a crocodile. Him playing “sad” was laughable. At the time, he thought his best friend died, but he just gets all mad and goes, “Damn you, Leo!”, thinking that it sounded extra distressing. Ironically, this “sad” moment comes off as one of the funnier things he does in the movie. Firewalker is still a fun movie for Chuck Norris fans like myself, but I can’t lie to you, his action hero peers that have also dipped into the action-comedy genre have done it much better.

However, in fear of Chuck Norris, I will never tell him to stay in his lane. Do your thing Chuck! I’ll still watch!

What Firewalker lacks is originality. Obviously, it would be ridiculously unfair to compare this film to something like Indiana Jones because those are some top tier treasure hunting films. Just so I don’t disrespect my man Chuck Norris, I won’t even compare it to the much-better Romancing the Stone. I will, however, compare it to fellow Cannon Group film King Solomon’s Mines and its sequel Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. Both are treasure hunting movies that follow the similar style that better films have gotten away with. However, those Richard Chamberlain-led films are much better than Firewalker on so many different levels. First of all, they did the action-comedy combo better in those movies and though it wasn’t laugh-out-loud, the light-hearted tone translated noticeably better. Firewalker tried to force jokes and set up Chuck, but they really felt like written-down comments rather than something that sounded natural. Don’t get me wrong, I still laughed a bit but not significantly. One scene that genuinely worked was Max, Leo, and Patricia having to disguise themselves as priests and being forced to deliver this dying person’s last rites. That scene by itself was silly enough to show us the potential of what Firewalker could’ve been, along with Max’s inability to shoot someone because he has the aim of a cross-eyed donkey.

This is the type of energy they should’ve carried throughout the movie, but they didn’t lean into the zaniness of the situations nearly as much as they should’ve. King Solomon’s Mines didn’t do it perfectly, but they kept the tone the same throughout, feeling much more cohesive and natural. It acknowledged the ridiculousness of the scenarios from time-to-time as well. Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone also fit well together, while Melody Anderson and Chuck Norris didn’t. This is mostly because Anderson’s very generic, copy-and-paste role as the love interest. Her performance offered nothing, but the role was terribly underwritten too. Her personality leaves much to be desired, and she plays a role done significantly better by Sharon Stone in the Allan Quatermain films, as well as the annoying Kate Capshaw in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In terms of her backstory, we don’t get much of anything. She just gives us the most basic plot of “I have this map and it leads to gold. You in?”, and they’re like “okay”. The little instances we get about her, her motivation, her family, and where she’s from, are all virtually non-existent. We never get to know her on a personal level. We just know she’s mildly pretty and has the map, so I guess we’re going to follow her.

The only thing she lets Max know is that sometimes she gets visions of the future, and it freaks her out. It’s not like she’s a psychic or anything. It’s described more like dreams, or déjà vu. However, it doesn’t even come to play in the film, so this point is irrelevant. She also gets extremely mad after overhearing Max call her a fruitcake to Leo. It’s something that bothers her so much that she references this comment throughout the film. Why would someone be this mad at such a weak insult? What the hell does calling a woman a fruitcake even mean? Does it mean she’s weak or crazy? I’ve heard much worse insults in my life, so I find it hard to believe that the term “fruitcake” hurled towards a woman could be this offensive.

This has nothing to do with her personality, but there’s one specific gripe I had again about some of the stuff said in this screenplay. She describes the thing that is chasing her as a “red cyclops” that isn’t even a man. Then, she gets frustrated Max and Leo don’t believe her. Well, this “red cyclops” is revealed….

…wait for it…

….to be a Native American Indian brandishing an eyepatch! Why in the fuck would you describe this guy as a RED CYCLOPS when you could just say he has an eyepatch? First of all, are you fucking blind? Second of all, why are you wondering why no one believes you when after the revelation, you’re still wrong? Unless you’re not a native English speaker and aren’t familiar with describing people to other native speakers, I don’t see why you would describe this guy as a red cyclops. I understand that “red” in this sense is a derogatory term to Native Americans but combining it all to say “red cyclops” is so far off from the way any normal person would describe this guy, her description comes off as absolutely absurd.

El Coyote is this cyclops by the way, and he’s an over-the-top villain straight out of a Power Rangers episode. He even has this terrible finishing move of covering his opponent’s face with his hand. Somehow, this is enough for him to choke people out, despite his fingers not even being closed and air could easily get through it. Realistically, this move would be more of an uncomfortable inconvenience rather than something that could kill Chuck Norris. Tall Eagle is presented as this all-important figure that is supposed to set up our heroes on their journey, but he’s exactly how you would write the most stereotypical Native American Indian character ever. I’m honestly surprised he didn’t smoke a peace pipe and say “How”. He gives us nothing we haven’t seen before and shows no discernible traits that would make him remotely memorable, other than the fact that he’s not a part of the main cast. He’s the one that gives the very important speech about who the “Firewalker” is, and it’s almost nothing. It’s like two sentences, despite the entire name of the movie revolving around it. On top of that, his description was comically generic, and he doesn’t even go into detail about it. He brings up how the Spanish wanted the Firewalker’s gold but gives us no follow-up to it. He just goes on about how the Firewalker went into the sun.

Then what happened, Mr. Eagle?!

Considering this whole movie is about the Firewalker, I needed a much more elaborate backstory to make sense of this whole mission, the importance of it, and the consequences of it all. I didn’t feel the seriousness of the situation whatsoever after they left the man’s house.

To make a good, comedic, action-adventure film, you need solid supporting characters that are memorable. Plus, you need awesome action to put it over the top. They had instances of the supporting characters (minus the moronic one’s I just mentioned), such as Ian Abercrombie’s do-anything-for-money role and King Solomon’s Mines co-star John Rhys-Davies. Abercrombie’s Boggs might have been the only one that had a few layers to him and that’s saying something since he was only in two scenes. He gives the trio information but immediately double crosses them by telling El Coyote where they’re going. His slimy character could’ve easily been used more as a secondary antagonist, or someone that eventually turns back to the good side in the end. He had an interesting personality, and it was exactly what the movie needed to make the story a lot deeper (and genuinely more entertaining). However, he was gone just like that. Rhys-Davies (the only man to appear in this film, King Solomon’s Mines, and Raiders of the Lost Ark), was also a big part of the movie as the former good friend of Max’s when they were in the military. They detour at this jungle camp he runs, and it’s a nice sidetrack to the main story. We learn more about Max, and Rhys-Davies’s Corky shows signs of being an undeclared tyrannical ruler, showing Max what he could be without Leo by his side. This deviation from the main plot added a lot of depth. Corky was very interesting but again, the character was quickly forgotten about in the third act.

Why? Honestly, both characters should’ve been involved more in the film. It could’ve saved it.

They could’ve added even more obstacles for Max, Leo, and Patricia to face, something that was desperately needed. They could’ve all been vying for the gold. Boggs could try and take the treasure while no one is looking, Corky could bring his army to the temple to stop El Coyote, only to turn on Max and Leo and demand the gold, etc. There are so many possibilities to push Firewalker into a much better position, but the film misses most of their opportunities. At least the action makes up for it, right? Unfortunately, I wasn’t impressed with that either, especially for us Chuck Norris fans. Considering the subject matter, the type of bad guys we’re dealing with, the star, the big-time atmosphere they’re involved in, and the implications of what their mission is, we have nowhere near the amount of action we should. For a Chuck Norris movie and his fans, it’s downright disappointing. The movie poster has more going on it than the actual film does.

Even the climax was too quick!

Looking at the positives, it’s still a fun film when we compare it to other Chuck Norris movies. Seeing Norris chomp down on a cigar and loosening up a little is a nice sight to see. Louis Gossett Jr. does very well as the rational member of their team and friendship and even with the poorly written screenplay, he plays things off naturally and does a good job. He arguably has more chemistry with Melody Anderson than Norris does. Regardless, I enjoyed his partnership with Norris’s character, even though it wasn’t as entertaining as I wanted it to be.

Firewalker could’ve and should’ve been a game-changer for Chuck Norris. The idea of a treasure hunting movie is as fun as it gets and there are a lot of positive moments, but it felt like they were confident they sold us on the premise and wrote the rest of the film as lazily as possible. With a serious lack of creativity, underdeveloped characters, and major missed opportunities, this ends up being a lot worse than it should’ve been.