Chuck Norris does his best Harrison Ford (which isn’t good enough) in Firewalker, the Cannon Films answer to the Indiana Jones franchise. Give Chuck credit for trying something different, but it doesn’t work. Call it Texas Ranger and the Temple of Dumb.
Norris is adventurer-for-hire Max Donigan, hired by Flash Gordon‘s Melody Anderson (as the ersatz Kate Capshaw) to guide her to a horde of Aztec gold located in a cave supposedly guarded by a cyclops — so says the ancient treasure map which has come into her possession. Iron Eagle‘s Louis Gossett Jr. is Donigan’s minority sidekick, and stepping into John Rhys-Davies’ Raiders of the Lost Ark role is John Rhys-Davies, because what else does the guy have to do but eat?
Finding the cave is simple; getting the gold is another matter. Chuck sums up the plot as best as anyone: “OK, you’ve got gold, human sacrifice, a dagger and the sun.” He and his cohorts get into all sorts of wacky, Central American pickles, from puttering around the jungle in a camo-painted VW Bug to hopping aboard a train disguised as Catholic clergy members.
Firewalker begins in a semisolid state, as old-fashioned serial fun. It ends that way, too, but dumber. The problem is its meandering, near-torturous midsection, made worse by Norris and company’s inability to handle the script’s reliance on comedy. The movie might have worked better in the less-wrinkled hands of a younger, livelier director, whereas J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) was nearing the close of his long career. Besides, didn’t he receive his first Social Security check somewhere between chapters six and seven of Radar Men from the Moon?
Our heroes take so many photographs during their journeys that you’d expect to see the shots during the end credits, but Cannon budgets didn’t allow a line item for Fotomat developing. Also, no one walks on fire. —Rod Lott