McQ

The most interesting thing about McQ was that in the final showdown with Santiago and his men, McQ (John Wayne) actually has the firepower advantage. He has a MAC-10, and we've already seen he's an excellent shot. Meanwhile, Santiago and his men are carrying pump-action shotguns and assorted handguns. How often does the good guy have the better weapons, in addition to be smart enough to use them properly? Also, even though this movie was made in the '70s, not the '80s, the bad guys are still morons. In particular, after McQ shoots up one car of bad guys, the lone survivor, loudly opens his car door and steps out to try and shoot McQ in the back, rather than just sticking the barrel out the window and shooting him in the back that way. Complete moron.

Other things of note:

There's a car chase sequence that felt like it was trying really hard to emulate Bullit. I don't think it pulled it off, partially because he was chasing a delivery truck rather than another fast car. The chase sequence on the beach at the end was pretty good.

The main female lead was played by Diana Muldaur, who I knew mostly as Dr. Pulaski from thos seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I never liked Pulaski, mostly because she was so biased against Data. "Oh Data, you can't be Sherlock Holmes because you don't have intuition like us humans. Ha, ha!" Damn it, he's trying hard, cut him some slack! I shouldn't have been surprised, since Data himself mentioned humans could be very prejudiced like that the first time he met Riker. It still didn't do the character any favors with me.

I wondered how a cop could afford to have a boat, and a Trans Am. The answer was "Borrow heavily against his pension." He should have tried the "Steal drugs from the evidence room" tactic. That seems to work pretty well. Until it doesn't. It's be too much to hope for that Wayne would play a dirty cop.

He does engage in a little beating up of a mouthy "militant radical", who looked an awful lot like a hippie. Hippies don't strike me as particularly militant. Mouthy, sure, but militant, not so much. This one was though, and he got kicked in the kneecap for his trouble. Oh, sorry, he "ran into a chair".