Firewalker (film)
| Firewalker | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | J. Lee Thompson |
| Produced by |
Menahem Golan Yoram Globus |
| Written by | Robert Gosnell & Jeffrey M. Rosenbaum & Norman Aladjem (story) Robert Gosnell (screenplay) |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Gary Chang |
| Cinematography | Álex Phillips Jr. |
| Edited by |
Richard Marks Carlos Puente Charles Simmons |
| Distributed by |
The Cannon Group (Theatrical Release) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (DVD Release) Paramount Pictures (Current Digital/TV Rights) |
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Release date
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Running time
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104 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $11,834,302 |
Firewalker is a 1986 action adventure film starring Chuck Norris, Louis Gossett, Jr., Will Sampson and Melody Anderson. It was directed by J. Lee Thompson and written by Norman Aladjem, Robert Gosnell and Jeffrey M. Rosenbaum. This was the first comedic role for Norris, giving him a chance to poke fun at his action persona.
Norris and Gossett play Max Donigan and Leo Porter, two soldiers of fortune, whose adventures rarely result in any notable gain. They are befriended by an inscrutable woman of mystery Patricia (Anderson). Patricia's map leads them on a quest for treasure in Central America. The name of the movie comes from the powerful guardian of the treasure.
This movie is famous for a fight scene in which Norris single-handedly defeats almost every male customer in a Mexican bar and destroys the bar in the process. Another aspect of Norris' character is his inability to properly use a firearm; in one scene, he kills a savage by pure luck after misfiring, the result was the bullet bouncing off the walls before hitting its target.
Firewalker received overwhelmingly negative reviews. As was the case with Norris's earlier film Missing in Action (1984) with its plagiarism of Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Firewalker was widely cited as a rip-off of many adventure films of that period, particularly the Indiana Jones films, Romancing the Stone and buddy pictures like Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hrs.
On At the Movies, both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film "thumbs down". Siskel said Firewalker was "one of the most derivative films in years, imitating elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone". He went on saying he believed "the movie was probably signed as a deal one month after the grosses started coming in for Romancing, and that was where the creativity stopped". Ebert said that he "would have tried to make a movie that didn't look like all those other adventure movies but cheap, watered-down, pale and uninteresting". In his print review, Ebert gave Firewalker 1 star out of 4:
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