15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant by Norris standards, April 8, 2004
While Chuck Norris has certainly appeared in some regrettable films during his lengthy career (can you say "The Hitman"?), I must say that "Lone Wolf McQuade" is one mightily entertaining movie. It perfectly plays to Norris's strengths, letting him to a little talking and a lot of butt-kicking as J.J. McQuade, a monosyllabic rebel who's earned legendary status as a Texas Ranger. McQuade delivers plenty of steely glares along with punches, kicks, and bullets, and has little respect for proper procedure, but he always get his man, as exemplified by an implausible opening scene in which he takes out about a dozen Mexican border criminals by himself. Yes, his character may be a cliche and a stereotype, but Norris plays him with admirable conviction, which is really all you can ask from him.
Perhaps more importantly, Norris actually gets a suitable foil in the form of "Kung Fu" legend David Carradine. Carradine fills the villain role very well as Rawley Wilkes (cool name), a smirking, smarmy, cigar-chewing gun-runner whose martial-arts expertise is matched by his fondness for argyle sweaters. Even if his first appearance in the movie didn't make it obvious, you'd be able to tell from one look at Rawley that he's pure evil. Even better, Carradine is joined in his crimes by an equally amoral partner who just happens to be a dwarf in an electric wheelchair. I'm not sure why, but that's just one of those inspired ideas that make a huge difference in movies.
The plot is rather minimal, but the makers of "Lone Wolf McQuade" were smart enough to give Norris fans what they want: action, action, and more action. After all, if we wanted substance, we could watch something else. Joined by a Mestizo partner and a renegade black FBI agent with a classic jheri curl, McQuade plows his way through a small army of inbred-looking thugs on his way to the inevitable showdown with Rawley at the end of the movie. Naturally, the bad guys have to make things personal by kidnapping McQuade's daughter, but all that does is raise the stakes when he finally does face Rawley. And while their fight scene may not quite match the legendary battle between Norris and Bruce Lee in "Way of the Dragon," there's still plenty of impressive brutality and technique for the martial-arts buff.
While the camp factor in "Lone Wolf McQuade" is still pretty high, that's certainly to be expected from a Norris movie. Yes, it's a bit dated, but those looking for some great pure action will not come away disappointed. If you're a fan of action movies in general or Norris movies in particular, you can do a lot worse. This is a prime entry in the "redneck action" subgenre.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Get me a beer, kid.", May 20, 2006
SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED
In what ranks as his finest starring vehicle ever, Chuck Norris plays Texas Ranger J.J. McQuade, the "Lone Wolf" of the title. This A- movie is a cinematic monument to macho men, albeit with it's tongue firmly jammed into it's cheek. Broadly sampling Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns and Sam Peckinpah's slow motion mass destruction epics, LONE WOLF McQUADE established Chuck Norris as a scion of the Clenched Jaw School of Acting personified by Kirk Douglas, James Coburn, Lee Marvin, and the early Clint Eastwood.
In the first five minutes of the film we are treated to a large scale automatic weapons shootout between a gang of modern-day Mexican horse theives on one side, and McQuade on the other. This entree sets the movie's tone of violent but cartoonish excess leavened with snarly comedy.
Despite McQuade's record of making more felony arrests than any other Ranger, the Establishment (personified in a fat, balding, self-righteous and pompous Ranger Captain) wants to rein McQuade in and make him part of the team. After being assigned a new partner (the rookie Ranger Kayo, played by a very young Roger Beltran, later of STAR TREK fame), McQuade withdraws to his sanctum sanctorum, a remote, filthy house in the desert cluttered with beer cans, dirty laundry, year-old take out food, gun catalogues and God-knows-what-else, all guarded by a coyote (in other words, a typical bachelor pad). Kayo tags along puppy-like, unwanted.
Lone Wolf McQuade's nemesis, Rawley Wilkes, is a big-time gunrunner, played by David Carradine (the former star of KUNG FU). Wilkes tries to kill McQuade's daughter Sally (Dana Kimmel) for having witnessed a major arms hijacking, and this plot contrivance propels the film. Rawley Wilkes' girlfriend, Lola Richardson (the incredibly sexual Barbara Carrera at the peak of her powers) decides she likes white hats, and moves in with the Lone Wolf. She cleans his house, does his laundry, buys vitamins, cooks real meals for him, and throws out his beer (!), putting McQuade into a complete panic. He almost ends their relationship in a fit of machismo during which McQuade pops open a foaming beer can at crotch level and growls, "Lady, if I want to kill myself, that's my business." Lola storms out in a feminine huff, but the big tough guy immediately begs her to return. This is all typical male behavior, of course. After all, would YOU toss Barbara Carrera out the door?
Wilkes, who is tired of McQuade's meddling on just so many levels, kidnaps his daughter, kills his best friend Dakota (the iconic Western actor L.Q. Jones), shoots the coyote, snatches Lola, and decides to entrap the Ranger, luring him into the middle of nowhere. After delivering a topnotch beating, Wilkes orders that McQuade be buried alive in his nitro-powered SUV. What follows can only be called "the holy scene," undoubtedly the apotheosis of this genre of film:
McQuade regains consciousness. Realizing he is buried alive, he grabs a can, anoints himself with beer, starts his truck, fires up the nitro, and drives himself out of his own grave, all to the accompaniment of a choir of angels in full voice. As he falls to the ground horribly injured, Kayo cries out, "Ranger! Don't die on me now!" to which McQuade responds epochally, "Get me a beer, kid."
Having lost daughter, dog, lover and best friend, McQuade follows Wilkes to Mexico, where there is a huge set-piece battle between the good guys and the bad guys, capped by a karate matchup between the World Champion Norris and the much less talented Carradine, who is allowed a few good kicks and punches before being dispatched to his reward.
Amazingly, this well-casted, well-acted, well-crafted and perennially popular film spawned no sequels, but it did inspire Norris' mild salsa version TV show, WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. A well-spent ninety minutes, LONE WOLF McQUADE may never be your girlfriend's favorite film, but it's a movie Everyman can enjoy.
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