Lone Wolf McQuade is a Chuck Norris movie from the early 80’s. It’s a cop movie, with a touch of western and karate thrown in.
10 years before he was
The plot of this one is just one cliché after another. He’s a rule-breaking, human rights violating Dirty Harry type, he goes up against some drug dealers, they attack his family, he wants revenge, he pulls some shit and gets suspended but continues fighting any way, etc. He has a new partner, they don’t get along at first, but slowly McQuade warms up to him, Yadda Yadda. It’s also really corny, and I suspect took itself seriously. I kept wanting to think that the movie was being a little tongue-in-cheek about its silly plot, but afterwards I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case.
There are, however, a lot of weird, funny details that made me hope, for a while, that it was going to be one of those good corny B-movies. For instance, one of the main villains is a dwarf in a motorized wheelchair. He is a feared mob boss. Which shows you that the filmmakers were at least trying. The other main bad guy is played by David Carradine. He plays a master of karate/drug dealer, and he drives a car with a license plate that says “Carate.” Because it’s a car owned by a karate guy.
That kind of shit is, obviously, awesome. There are other moments like that lend some interest to the movie. There is also a really good action scene where Norris jumps onto the back of a moving pickup truck, and ends up doing some weird parallel bars routine on the rail to keep from falling off.
Too bad too much of the movie is just plain boring. Too many lame attempts at humor, too many obligatory cop movie scenes with no fresh twist. Then the final action scene is a big let down. It’s a large scale but generic shootout, and then Norris kills Carradine by throwing a grenade at him. Talk about a lack of drama! These guys are both karate masters, Carradine has killed Norris’ friend and girlfriend, and kidnapped his daughter. Norris should kill this guy with his hands. Face to face. Break the fucker in two. It needs to be personal, intimate. But I guess they wanted to end with a big explosion.
A few months back I saw a Norris movie called Code of Silence, and it was alright. It was kind of a generic cop movie like McQuade, but the last 30 minutes or so had a lot of good action and redeemed the rest of the movie. I think if McQuade had a better climax, I could recommend it. As it is, I advise you not to bother.
UPDATE 12/6/07
So I'm flipping around the movie channels tonight and guess what's on? 4 effin' days after I just watched it. So I could have saved a spot on my Netflix queue.
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