CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

When you're watching through every leading role in a movie star's career, you inevitably start to think of the actor as the main driving force behind most of the creative decisions. In a case such as Chuck Norris, where audiences are expecting very specific things from his movies, this is probably more true than with a performer that absorbs themselves more in a character. We are here to watch Chuck Norris do Chuck Norris things, not see the versatility of his acting. Accordingly, Mr. Norris did not work with the same directors that often in his earlier credits, most of the filmmakers not having diverse or memorable filmographies of their own. Steve Carver is the exception. A graduate of the Roger Corman school of independent film making, Carver's name is on notable B-movies like “The Arena” and “Big Bad Mama.” He would graduate to slightly classier studio movies with “Capone” and “Drum” before directing “An Eye for an Eye.” Chuck and Carver must have gotten along because the two teamed up again for 1983's “Lone Wolf McQuade.” Back in 1983, it got slightly better reviews than previous Norris joints and remains a favorite among his fans. 

J.J. McQuade is a Texas Ranger in El Paso, a cowboy hat wearing, karate-kicking former Marine who drives a turbo-charged truck, carries a big gun, and doesn't seem to own a shirt that buttons up all the way. His lone wolf attitude brings in the bad guys – frequently in body bags – but has made him unpopular with his commanding officers. McQuade's boss teams him up with Kayo, a younger and more by-the-book highway patrolman. McQuade's teenage daughter is injured after stumbling upon a criminal syndicate smuggling weapons across the border. He reluctantly teams up with Kayo to get to the bottom of the case. A smug, kung fu fighting weapons dealer named Rawley Wilkes is behind the operations. He is muscling into the territory of local crime lord Falcon, prompting an alliance of sorts. McQuade also ends up romancing Rawley's moll, a horse trainer named Lola, making the inevitable confrontation all the more personal when his daughter is kidnapped by the bad guys and he has to go across the border to get her back.

While Bruce Lee or any other martial artist star might seem like the more obvious inspiration, Chuck Norris was always fairly open about what movie star he wanted to be. In interviews promoting “Good Guys Wear Black,” he directly cited Clint Eastwood as his model. “Lone Wolf McQuade” follows that influence to its logical conclusion. The opening credits feature a font not dissimilar to that seen in Sergio Leone's “Dollars” trilogy. Composer Francesco De Masi does a decent Ennio Morricone impression on the soundtrack. Cinematography Roger Shearman invokes Leone's mythic version of the American West in the opening scene, filming Norris behind the midday sun and among the wide, flat Texas deserts.. The movie is a spaghetti western for the eighties. There are Dodge trucks instead of horses and Uzis instead of Winchester rifles but “Lone Wolf McQuade” is still operating in that same mode. It's a hyper-real story of tough men, with stubble and perpetually sweaty faces, hunting down far more ruthless villains in a south-western landscape so barren and topped with rocky structures as to be a fantasy land. 

“Lone Wolf McQuade” is also an action movie from the era when the genre was starting to get more excessive, the pyrotechnics and machismo reaching such a level that it very quickly crossed over into the realm of self-parody. That actually turns out to be a good fit for the spaghetti western aesthetic, which was already a more exaggerated version of traditional American myth making. While Norris' past films were mostly fight movies with some shoot-outs or explosions added here and there, “McQuade” truly ups the ante. The opening sequence has machine gun fire breaking out across the mesas of the desert. A well done stunt involves the action star being dragged behind a moving truck, a sequence that concludes with a fiery explosion. The last act, meanwhile, is an orgy of bullets, flames, and heavy machinery. Norris' movies before this one very much felt like B-movies, lower budget attempts to compete with the big studio spectacles. “Lone Wolf McQuade” is the first time the star seems to be operating on the same level of gloriously overwrought mega-violence as his peers.

Shortly before his death, Steve Carver would do an interview where he admitted that Chuck Norris wasn't much of an actor. He called his performance “mechanical.” It is true that Norris has not always had the most graceful line readings or emotions up to this point. There are a few exchanges in “Lone Wolf McQuade” that come off as fairly stiff. However, the guy had developed a certain presence, which the film definitely capitalizes on. The film sees Norris bonding with “Friday the 13th Part III's” Dana Kimmell as his daughter, the actor convincingly being paternal towards her. It's an interesting note that McQuade's ex-wife is written as still fond of him, their relationship seeming easy-going and relaxed. A way overqualified Barbara Carrera plays his proper love interest. When she cleans his filthy house out, McQuade is annoyed at first but soon tries to do better. This proceeds a very silly but kind of sexy garden hose assisted make-up session. When out at a date in a saloon, Carrera slaps a handsy barfly. Amazingly, McQuade walks away from the conflict here. All of this points towards the secret appeal of Norris as an action star. Despite his tough guy exterior and powerful punches, he's actually kind of a sweetheart. Men want to be him, sure, but also he could be your dad. Women can actually imagine themselves running their hands over his hairy chest, as opposed to the god-like mega-physiques of Arnold or Stallone. 

Chuck's more approachable style of bad-assery did not mean that his films were any less campy than the bigger budget fair coming out at the time. In fact, “Lone Wolf McQuade” is hilariously silly in spots. A key sequence involves McQuade being buried alive in his truck. He does not escape this death trap through quick thinking or any applied skill. Instead, he pours a beer all over himself and revs the engine until the truck explodes out of the earth, sheer boneheaded good ol' boy brute force overcoming the laws of physics. That McQuade is a romantic lead is amusing, considering his sloppy, beer-swilling life style – directly compared to the wolf-dog that is his pet – seems irreconcilable with a feminine touch. (That dog, by the way, gets a far more mournful send-off than a later death scene. Carrera is effortlessly charming in her part but the character is never anything more than a pawn to pass between the hero and villain, woman as accessory to brawny guys.)

What I'm saying is this is Chuck's gayest movie since “Breaker! Breaker!” Despite being a lone wolf, McQuade's most important bonds are with the other guys in the movie. He has a mentor relationship with L.Q. Jones as an older cowboy cop. Despite initially being antagonistic towards him, in buddy cop movie fashion, McQuade and Kayo becomes partners before the end. The final scene even sees Kayo pulling the hero's attention away from his ex-wife and daughter, inviting him to leave the women behind and play with the boys. Before his final dual with the bad guy, McQuade removes his belt. Obviously, this is a hero and villain setting their fire arms aside to have a fair fight but it's seemingly deliberately framed as a prelude to a distinctly different type of wrestling. “Lone Wolf” is hilariously adrift with hyper-macho imagery. McQuade is usually seen with an oversized phallic firearm of some sort. A memorable moment has him pushing another vehicle out of a ditch with his Supercharger, after the other drivers besmirch his attitude, as if this is some truck-on-truck alpha wolf domination thing. That's not the only example of mechanical frottage in the film either. The dialogue is also littered with repeated references to the manly posterior. When McQuade's sidekick blasts a bad guy and says he “never forgets an asshole,” I'm sure it's supposed to be a tough one-liner but the implication struck me as slightly different. And it should go without saying that Chuck is topless for most of the film. This cowboy doesn't tuck in his shirt, no sir. 

As all of the above should indicate, this is not a motion picture of any degree of realism. “A Force of One,” “An Eye for an Eye,” and “Silent Rage” would all draw some attention to its protagonist overstepping the boundaries of law enforcement. You'd see Chuck turning in his badge before going full vigilante or attempting to visibly restrain himself before utilizing lethal force. That's not a problem for J.J. McQuade, who is blasting bad guys from the first scene on. A key moment has him capturing a key witness before L.Q. Jones tortures him by nearly shooting him several times. The last act has McQuade deliberately ignoring the laws of the land to cross the border and take on the weapon smugglers personally. He has the approval of the FBI in doing this. While R.G. Armstong as the captain chastises McQuade for his cowboy coppery, he is ultimately only rewarded for his extra-judicial actions. That was another sign we were well and truly in the eighties now. Harry Callahan would make a show of tossing his star away, acknowledging that he had broken the law in his pursuit of fascistic “justice.” J.J. McQuade doesn't give a shit about that and neither would Marion Cobretti, Martin Riggs, John McClane, or Jack Slater. Thus was the ethos of Ronald Reagan's “might makes right” administration. 

 

None of which is meant as a criticism. One must acknowledge the ridiculous perspective of films like this before being able to embrace them as the campy fantasies they are. On that level, “Lone Wolf McQuade” is effortlessly entertaining. The finale is an orgy of destruction, bazooka and bulldozer included, that repeatedly tops itself in terms of destruction. The climax is a showdown between Norris and David Carradine, a title bout between two of the icons of white boy kung-fu. Amusingly, Chuck would supposedly later be quoting as saying, “David Carradine is every bit the martial artist as I am an actor.” This is an astute, self-aware observation but I will say that Carradine can more convincingly throw a kick here than in his Kwai Chang Caine days. Carradine plays Rawley like a slithering snake of a bad guy, all slick self-confidence. His gold chain and polo shirt paints him as a deliberately different type of masculine verve than McQuade's sweaty, rugged cowboy machismo. Another campy touch is Falcon, the story's other gangster, being a dwarf. That too is a touch that feels more Sergio Leone than John Ford. 
 

In other words, “Lone Wolf McQuade” is absolute cinema. It takes all the goofy touches of Norris' earlier films and pairs them with a more self-assured sense of campy artifice. When Chuck does a slow-mo jump kick to a wooden target, it's a deliberate declaration that this shit is as awesome as it is silly. All the varied influences of Norris' self-image come together here, in a miasma of martial arts, western imagery, reactionary politics, and rascally redneck charm. I guess we are missing some New Age Native American mysticism or Born Again Christianity nonsense – two elements that Chuck would add when essentially recycling the film's premise for “Walker, Texas Ranger” – but the film has enough dudesweat and fireballs to make up for that. Take a beer bath yourself and give this one a spin, preferably on an over-rented VHS tape in the back of a shitty trailer, with the A/C howling against the scorching heat of the Texas summer night. [9/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 5 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest
[X] Sports Some Cowboy Getup