Firewalker (1986) – DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A
starring Chuck Norris, Lou Gossett, Melody Anderson, Will Sampson
screenplay by Robert Gosnell
directed by J. Lee Thompson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Of the many right-wing cinematic fantasies of the 1980s, by far the most flagrant and shameless were those of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. The Cannon Pictures magnates specialized in white folk dropped in the middle of jungles urban and outback: they gave us freedom fighters in Vietnam (Missing in Action), vigilante crime-fighters (the later entries in the Death Wish saga), and Indiana Jones cross-referenced with his colonial ancestors (King Solomon's Mines, et al). But though they were naked and blatant in their retrograde daydreams, they were also impossible to take seriously: Golan-Globus weren't just jerks, they were inept jerks–slovenly to the point of awe and stupefaction. Firewalker doesn't find them in top ludicrous form, but its childlike belief in both outdated stereotypes and papier-mâché sets facilitates a drinking game quite nicely.

Firewalker is clearly in the Jones-clones camp, though it's updated to take advantage of the day's filthy foreign threats. The film opens with our heroic adventurers menaced by an easy '80s signifier for evil: giggling Arabs in off-road vehicles. They seem to be led by a bald Southeast Asian man who has been air-lifted out of Red China but floats freely on the semiotic currents, and who is forgotten by the time devil-may-care Max Donigan (Chuck Norris) and careful worrywart Leo Porter (Louis Gossett, Jr.) extricate themselves from his rather unprofessional trap. Note that second-billed Gossett is included to ward off accusations of racism; note also that his second-banana character is included to make Norris look comparatively central. After all, they named him Porter.

What defines the pair as Golan-Globus heroes is their complete inability to inspire heroic respect. They mostly bicker in various third-world holes-in-the-wall about why they got into the fortune-hunting business in the first place. White, virginal Patricia Goodwyn (Flash Gordon's Melody Anderson) has to show up to offer them a sexual contrast to their low-grade maleness and introduce the lame plot about a treasure map leading to Central American gold. This is, of course, "the big score," making the dangers involved incidental–and by "dangers," I mean a) an Aztec true believer (Sonny Landham) who wants the gold for magical/cultural reasons, and b) the grimy banana-republic goons and soldiers of fortune standing in their way. Racist hijinks ensue; wagers are closed on how it turns out.

Of course, no Cannon picture is complete without a blatantly phoney set full of sub-Goonies traps and lots and lots of tunnels, thus the finale, in which poor Leo swings over a pit of dry ice as Max and Patricia search frantically for the treasure. But mentioning this fails to take into account the most telling scene, in which our heroes fall in with a group of thugs led by Great White Something-or-Other (John Rhys-Davies, inevitably): a career adventurer, he offers the closest thing to pathos with his precarious position when he'd really be better off with a nice desk job. Like the pirates of Penzance, he's just a good Englishman gone wrong, in this case lost amongst a mess of The Natives in some jungle backwater. It's a fitting metaphor for Golan and Globus, who took a few thoroughly despicable attitudes and through sheer force of incompetence made them appear as threatening as Gilbert and Sullivan. I'm looking forward to the Mike Leigh biopic.

THE DVD
Firewalker comes to us on DVD from MGM in a flipper fullscreen/1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation. The picture is surprisingly good for a film of such low calibre: colours are remarkably robust and well-saturated and detail is pretty good, though things get a tad murky in scenes of darkness. The Dolby 2.0 stereo surround sound is even better, playing a few good tricks with channel separation and offering a sharp and potent sound well beyond what this movie deserves. The only extra is Firewalker's theatrical trailer.

105 minutes; PG; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; MGM