Max Donigan sets off on a treasure hunt with his friend Leo and newly-acquired partner Patricia, who provided the treasure map. Along the way they encounter a few bar fights, evil "coyotes", and other obstacles they are able to overcome with ease. When they find the temple with the treasure, they also find the Firewalker, who wants to retain the power of his ancestors and put an end to the trio's treasure hunt. In the end, Max and his two friends persevere and return home wealthy. A pair of adventurers try to track down an ancient Aztec/Mayan/Egyptian/Apache hoard of gold. I love movies like this, but honestly….this is one of the few that I just can't watch anymore and I really can't understand why. It's not the quality, I've given 10 of 10 to a ton of badly made films just because they were like this.<br/><br/>Movies like this were awesome…huge from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen into the '90s when they started to peter out until, well, until they vanished leaving us with nothing but Super Hero films to fill the void…<br/><br/>…I have nothing against Super Hero films, but I love adventure films too.<br/><br/>I can see where folks would not like it, especially the people that take themselves too seriously. It is stuck in a genera that is at once extremely pulp and kind of serialized. Even if it's not a sequel, you know the story.<br/><br/>The Goonies, Nate and Hayes, Jake Speed, Romancing the Stone, Vibes, Big Trouble in Little China, Young Sherlock Holmes…and of course the crown, the king, the Indiana Jones movies.<br/><br/>They are all close enough to one another to really fit into the same mold. The characters change, the concepts stay the same and….we love it.<br/><br/>Enter the Roguish hero and the damsel in distress in an exotic location to find X marking the MacGuffin, but first they have to work their way through obstacles both natural and man made in the form of a nasty antagonist and a couple of henchmen. Throw in a semi-bumbling sidekick and you have what I like to call "High Adventure." "Firewalker" follows that outline and if you are the kind of individual that is still young enough at heart to love adventure films…you will inevitably like this movie.<br/><br/>If you are the kind of man or woman that takes everything extremely seriously and refuses to play at all, not matter what it is. If you are the type that would use the word "compete" instead of "play" or "game" than you are going to hate this movie. Firewalker starts as a woman named Patricia Goodman (Melody Anderson) ask's two adventurers for hire Max Donigan (Chuck Norris) & Leo Porter (Louis Gossett Jr.) to join her on a trip to an Indian reservation where she believes there is a fortune of gold. Using a treasure map she has they travel to the location & find a gold sacrificial knife & clues to where the rest of the treasure is hidden, they decide to team up & set out on an adventure to find the treasure overcoming all sorts of problems & dangers along the way…<br/><br/>Directed by J. Lee Thompson one has to say that Firewalker is crap, I thought it was utterly devoid of any action or excitement & the story sucked too. The script by Norman Aladjem, Robert Gosnell & Jeffrey M. Rosenbaum is like a poor man's cross between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) & Romancing the Stone (1984) with it's mixture of ancient mystic temples & magic along with it's basic adventure to find the gold at the end of a treasure map type story. Obviously meant as a buddy buddy mismatched partner comedy action adventure with a touch of fantasy Firewalker pretty much fails at everything it does, it amazingly unfunny with plenty of dumb dialogue, there's hardly any action in it with a few fights about the sum of it & the mystic elements are also crap & seemingly there purely for the hell of it. I was watching this last night & despite only running for about 100 minutes it felt like it went on forever, the narrative is poor as the trio stumble their way across Central America & unlike an Indiana Jones film where there is plenty of relevant action there's hardly any in Firewalker. The film feels like a travelogue at times such little happens as we follow the protagonists on their (boring) journey through a jungle.<br/><br/>Director Thompson is a very experienced action film director & I expected more here, the bad guy is nominal, the action scenes are bland & sluggish & it's as boring as hell. Apart from a few fights there really isn't any action at all, there's no car chases, explosions, anything original or shoot-outs & the violence is also minimum. As a whole it's a surprisingly dull & just downright poor film & I don't know what else I can say about it & it comes as no surprise it was produced by Menahem Golan & Yoran Globus under their Cannon Group & this is just the type of flick for which they have such a bad reputation & why they went bankrupt.<br/><br/>Technically the film is bland, I wouldn't have thought Firewalker had a big budget & it's a largely uneventful film. Apparently shot in Mexico. The acting is poor, you would have thought a film starring both Chuck Norris & Louis Gossett Jr. would be good but they both turn in poor performances & isn't in the so bad it's good category but the so bad it's bad category.<br/><br/>Firewalker is a really poor action adventure type film that I was extremely disappointed with, I just can't see anything positive in this film at all & I didn't like one little bit. Could have been fun, as it is it's crap.
Carlensi replied
376 weeks ago