Lone Wolf McQuade
Martial arts themed action films more often than not fall into the pit of well deserved obscurity because while itās easy to find your prototypical hero actor of the genre to play the hero of said film, more often than not casting directors are left scrambling when it comes to the process of finding a halfway decent actor to play the villain, otherwise known as the guy who will most likely have to match up against the hero at the end and of course, lose. Bruce Lee did pretty well in the bad guy department for his films, bringing in guys like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for Game Of Death along with Bob Wall and Bolo Young for Enter The Dragon and perhaps most memorably his one on one in The Roman Colosseum with Chuck Norris in Return Of The Dragon. Jackie Chan on the other hand, always struggled with finding qualified bad guy actors whom he could properly take on in his films with at least an equal amount of presence, a trait of his films that was later reflected in the large amount of bad guy roles that Chan himself would turn down supposedly on account of the possible damage it would do to his screen image. Then there is of course Chuck Norris who had dusted himself off from the beatdown which Lee had laid on him to forge his own path in martial arts oriented films, but Norrisā handlers had also smartly had him cast in movies where he would play an agent of law enforcement and the films themselves were structured like normal action films where the use of firearms and explosives were also in play with many of the villains being of the suit and tie variety even as they had plenty of paid henchmen for Chuck to plow his way through provided they got past the bullets that would fly in his gunfights. But qualified lead villains could still sometimes be hard to come by when it came to Chuck getting to face someone with at least the same stature that he held as a world class competitive martial artist as it was when he played the imposing Colt going against Lee all those years ago. Finally in 1983, it seemed that the prayers were answered for Chuck and his fans when this otherwise assembly line actioner was released. Although Chuck would still dominate the film in terms of screentime, in the role of the main lead villain the producers would score a major casting coup in one David Carradine, renowned for being the hero of the legendary Kung Fu TV show and a guy who was also adept at playing both heroes (Death Race 2000) and villains (Kill Bill) with equal aplomb. Carradine also carried the air about him all the way up to his mysterious death of being someone who was deeply steeped in Eastern mystical culture, a guy who knew more secrets than he ever let on about things that we knew absolutely nothing about. The problems between he and Chuck started almost immediately when Carradine demanded (and got) a clause in his contract stating that he not be shown onscreen losing in hand to hand combat (although dying a more conventional villain death was fine by him) which obviously put a damper on the big final showdown between he and Norris. Norris would later give interviews deriding Carradineās actual martial arts skills, claiming that the guy talked a good fight to maintain his image but really wasnāt much of a fighter himself. Reports from those on the set during the final showdown reported several instances of the two of them coming to real blows during filming usually whenever Carradine would hit Norris with a purposely stiff shot and draw a warning from Chuck not to do it again or else whereupon Carradine would do just that and then the shootfight was on, even as Carradine would later make the somewhat ludicrous claim that he and Norris never even touched each other during filming. On a side note, it should be said that if you admire a certain directorās style (Sergio Leone) and the style of that directorās favorite composer (Ennio Morricone), you should derive some inspiration from their work without directly copying it as this filmās director Steve Carver shamelessly does here, forgetting that heās making a modern day action film and portraying it instead as being one of Leoneās spaghetti Westerns right from the beginning showing Norrisā McQuade as a Texas Ranger busting some Mexican horse thieves, shooting down the whole bunch before physically dismantling the leader and taking him to jail alive. Apparently McQuadeās Lone Wolf nickname is for real as he drives a dirt covered SUV patrol vehicle, lives in a disgusting and filthy trailer / shed and literally even keeps a pet wolf around to scare off trespassers. When he gets saddled with a bumbling partner (Robert Beltran) by his long suffering commanding officer (R.G. Armstrong), he quickly chases the guy off at gunpoint. Eventually by chance he crosses the path of Rawley Wilkes (Carradine), said at different times to be either an arms dealer or a drug lord or both, but none of that really matters in terms of what kind of criminal activity that heās actually involved in. You see, the film puts forth the most unusual idea that Carradineās villain (who enjoys holding public exhibitions showing off his own martial arts skills) is fully aware of the reputation and skills of Norrisā McQuade and is literally doing everything in his power to goad him into a fight, starting off by challenging him in public for āa little wagerā only for Norris to politely tell him that he ādoesnāt fight for moneyā, but when Carradine witnesses Norris cracking the skulls of a couple of bullies who were picking on his bumbling ass of a partner, he realizes that he must not only provoke Norris properly, but also be able to manufacture a righteous cause that Chuck must be willing to fight for when all conventional wisdom would dictate that Carradine with his criminal activities would want to stay as very far away as possible from this Texas Ranger who has logged more felony arrests than anybody else in his field. So Carradine sets about doing everything that he can to antagonize Chuck and earn his wrath including killing his pet wolf, killing his best friend (L.Q. Jones) who himself is a retired Texas Ranger, burying Chuck along with his dirt covered Ranger patrol vehicle in an easily escapable landfill and then first injuring his daughter (Dana Kimmell, still beloved in many horror circles for her sweet heroine in Friday The 13th Part 3 whom Jason Voorhees for the only time in that entire series might have possibly raped instead of killed) by pushing her car off the road after killing her boyfriend before just outright kidnapping her and making sure that Chuck knows exactly where to find them if he wants to rescue her. And set out to rescue her he does with the help of Beltran and a third wheel FBI agent (Leon Isaac Kennedy, himself a hard fighting cult star from the Penitentiary films), leading to a big all out battle that basically destroys all of Carradineās illegal contraband. Not that he cares of course (the only character that seems to care is a wheelchair bound midget crime boss played by Daniel Frishman who nonetheless still seems to be fully aware of Carradineās true motives), since the only thing which he wants is to face Norris one on one and match up their martial arts skills against each other, sensible thinking in criminal business interests be damned. The one psychological trump card that Norris has to his advantage is in luring away Carradineās girlfriend played by Barbara Carrera although her motives of which one of them sheās actually betraying or setting up is never quite made clear (we are told that Carradine had murdered her husband whom he was partners with before claiming her as his own) and even with that being an obvious motivation, both Carradine and his men never seem to try killing Norris whenever they have a chance to do so, laying in wait instead so that Carradine can get what he wants, a big showdown against a true blue good guy whom heās heard so much about for his fighting prowess. If much of this sounds like the plot for a cartoonish B movie, thatās because it is, all while distracting viewers with its Leone like directorial flourishes as it built its whole ad campaign around its big Norris vs Carradine showdown more like a pay per view MMA event than an actual feature film release, doing so at the expense of having Carradineās bad guy throw basic caution and common sense out the window in a near suicidal quest to take on a guy whom he would have been better suited to stay far, far away fromā¦
7/10