Chuck Norris

Yes, I can review an entire person, who said I can't review an entire person? NOBODY, that's who!

And I'm not going to review many parts of his life, quite frankly, all I am interested in is his otherwise excellent movie career. His TV series are probably well known to many, the whole walker texas ranger thing has been referenced in other movies ("These are my sons, Walker, and Texas Ranger." Talladega Nights) and the Chuck Norris fact thing was an internet phenomenon for a while, probably still is. I heard he turned 70 years old on March 10th of this year, but he kicked alzheimer's so hard that EVERYBODY got better from it.

Before I get into the whole movie aspect of his career, there's a personal one I'd like to disagree with. Chuck's a conservative christian, and involved in politics, and if you glance at his wikipedia page, it shows he even has his own school of martial arts. Apparently, several of the ten main rules to follow in his school are tolerance for others, and a desire to seek the betterment of others as well as yourself. However, as I understand it and perhaps I am wrong, Chuck does not believe gays and lesbians have equal rights, and has campaigned against letting them marry in the past. I suppose those rules in his martial arts school are a do-as-i-say-and-not-as-i-do thing. Which is good, I guess, he recognizes the flaws in his own character and doesn't want to pass them along to others. lol

Now I know he's got some movie series, that whole Missing in action, and delta force thing, they are okay and all, but I am more concerned with his one-offs, those movies he did where he didn't have a sequel, and he didn't have a huge following at the time. Movies like A Force of One, Code of Silence, And Silent Rage, for instance, demonstrate his admitted love of playing soldiers and law officers and his admitted respect for these guys. As I understand it, he was in fact a soldier early in his career, which is where he got into martial arts.

Believe it or not, Chuck started his movie career as a bad guy. Yes, that's right, I am talking about the Return of the Dragon, as the movie was called here in the USA. Chuck starred in this movie as a mercenary martial artist hired to kick bruce lee's ass. He failed miserably, of course, Bruce was huge at the time (I think that was bruce lee's last movie, too) and this was chuck's first movie, and according to his wikipedia page, had just finished a winning career as a professional kickboxer, which no doubt led to his career in movies. Also, according to IMDB, he actually trained often with bruce lee, which would explain how he got the role, I would guess?

The first real movie he stars in and the first one showing off his typical style came in A Force Of one, released in 1979. This would have been about ten years after the peak of his professional kickboxing career, and a good six years after his appearance with bruce lee. I am not sure what he was doing in that time, because this movie is almost a glimpse of his kickboxing career with a few liberties. He plays a kickboxer, amazingly enough, who is tapped to teach the police some martial arts moves, and while doing so, they invite him to assist in a drug investigation within the kickboxing community since they keep losing cops to a brutal killer. There's no particular stretch as far as acting goes for old chuck here, or a young chuck at this point in his life, but there's a little acting talent thrown in to support him, and the flick is a good old fashioned action film, ending in your typical mano-a-mano brawl with the bad guy, which will become a staple of chuck norris films for years to come.

The next 3 years after this would become the high point of his professional movie career, in my opinion. In 1980, he did The Octagon, a typical Ninja movie at the time, but still a good watch, then Silent Rage in 1982 and of course, Lone Wolf Mcquade in 1983. Lone Wolf Mcquade was, of course, the prototype for Walker Texas Ranger, and after this, Chuck got into the Braddock, Missing in Action series of movies, which were okay but ultimately forgettable, and not as good as the First Blood series by Sylvester Stallone.

Now, what I think was the best movie Chuck Norris ever did, during the high point of this time, is the little-remembered Silent Rage. And yes, the last few paragraphs were simply a lead-in to describing what an awesome movie this was. Chuck plays his typical role here, an ass kicking southern sherriff, but what makes this movie different is a number of things. The first of which is an awesome, and I wouldn't even say supporting cast, though I suppose chuck norris is one of the few surviving characters in the film. Also starring in it are Ron Silver and Stephen Furst who typically steal the scene when they do share one with Chuck do to their acting talents.

The movie starts with the villain, who is apparently boarding with a typical family in a suburban location. When I say typical, I mean the household from hell with 82 screaming children, a mother who doesn't care and why the HELL a suburban mom would choose to take in an obviously psychopathic boarder is totally unknown to me, but there it is. This guy, who has the remarkably non-descript name of John Kirby (played by an awesome but relatively unknown character actor Brian Libby), is going about his daily routine, which apparently involves taking mutiple doses of anti-psychotics and chopping wood, when the screaming kids begin to wear down his already fragile grip on reality. Also, I greatly enjoy the fact that they take the time out to show how this man sought help, when he felt himself cracking up, he called his psychiatrist (Ron Silver) in an attempt to get some help as quickly as possible. In a characteristically memorable scene, John Kirby repeatedly says (to a suitably muted Ron Silver over the phone) "I'm losing it... I'm looosing it... I'm loooooooosiiiing iiiiit..." before going completely apeshit and hacking up whoever in the house makes a single peep of noise. Which, as far as I remember, turns out to be just the Mom, the kids having run off to a neighbor's house to drive THAT person into an insane killing rage. I guess that was a whole other movie they could have done right there, and I'm sorry the kids escaped, but there it is. Chuck Norris, The Sherriff, then arrives with about 10000 deputies and they proceed to empty their six-guns at John Kirby, which makes about 60000 bullets fired and John Kirby manages to catch 6 of them in the chest. Where the other 59,994 bullets went is anyone's guess. Maybe they got the kids after all? Hmmmm. In any case, this makes this movie the odd one where the main villain is gunned down and arrested (no, the 6 bullets in his chest did NOT kill him, only served to knock him down long enough for Chuck to get some handcuffs on him) in the first 20 minutes of the movie.

What follows after this is probably the closest Chuck Norris ever gets to sci-fi or monster movies, and that is probably why this is my favorite movie of his career.

John Kirby is taken away in an ambulance, and we see Ron Silver come up, obviously having called the police after John called him, and says to Chuck "I'm sorry sherriff, obviously if he had given any indication of this, he wouldn't have been out on the street." Which I find hilariously funny given the rest of the movie. I think Ron Silver plays an excellent part here, as he did through much of his career, as a psychiatrist who does his best but makes a lot of mistakes despite that. John Kirby is later pronounced deceased at the hospital, and The Sherriff goes on about his business, busting up a gang of bikers in a bar with Stephun Furst, who, in what may be the most macho character of his career, wonderfully plays a scared, overweight newbie deputy. Chuck checks back at the hospital several times, mostly following up on John Kirby, but also because Ron Silver's little sister is a little hottie who chuck has dated in the past, and apparently wants to get back into her panties pretty bad. I can't blame him, I would have as well.

So while the sherriff is distracted by little sister's panties, Ron Silver's buddy doctor has injected the still-living or mostly dead John Kirby with an experimental serum designed to regenerate living tissue. I guess Ron had some weirdo college buddies in the hospital with him, because why a psychiatrist and his buddy are allowed to keep a body to experiment on, I have no idea. I mean, technically they were both doctors, but medical or psychiatric? I don't remember. Chuck finds this odd as well, eventually, since he visits the hospital several times throughout the movie to both hit on Ron Silver's little sister and to try and reclaim the corpse of john kirby. Spoilers to follow, so if you want to watch the movie, stop reading here and go rent it.

Unfortunately for Chuck, and pretty much the entire cast of the movie, John Kirby is not, in fact, dead. The experimental serum has not only given his body the ability to recover from any injury in seconds, but has warped his already warped mind beyond all recognition, turning John Kirby into an unstoppable killing machine. Ron silver realizes this, and despite the success of their mutually-developed serum and the possibility of making millions and gaining untold fame from it, Ron tries to convince his buddy to end the life of John Kirby. Ron Silver then leaves to go home, and John begins the real killing spree, taking out half the hospital staff on his way to go get Ron Silver, eventually surprising and killing Ron Silver, his wife, and almost his little sister before Chuck manages to save her.

The search for and fight with John Kirby eventually brings Chuck back to the hospital, where John Kirby has killed Ron Silver's buddy, and Stephen Furst buys it in a particularly touching romantic scene between chuck and his over-sized deputy. I mean seriously, I think there was real love between these guys the way they carry on. Maybe chuck just likes the larger guys, who knows? Anyway, in typical Chuck Norris style, he and the bad guy have it out in a particauly brutal hand to hand combat scene that ends not in the death of John Kirby, but in an excellent set up for a sequel, as John Kirby is only imprisoned alive where hopefully no one will ever find him, trapped at the bottom of a very deep well that would be almost impossible to climb out of. Since John Kirby can't actually die, except perhaps of starvation, I suspect he's still there, mutely trying to climb his way up the slippery, moss covered walls of that well, deep in the forest near that old hospital.

Chuck, meanwhile, saves the girl, Ron Silver's little sister and the only remaining member of the cast. In an unusual epilogue for a movie of this type, Chuck and the little sister are shown living happily ever after, or at least, surviving the incident to hook back up. I think an excellent idea for a sequel would be to get Chuck Norris, at the age of 70, to play his retired old sherriff character, long since married with multiple grandchildren, living on the property where the well is, checking it every day to make sure John is still down there, when one of his grandchildren drops a rope down and accidentally frees John Kirby, still young and lethal and even more insane after spending the last 40 years trapped in a well, letting him free to slaughter and kill...

But hey, that's just an idea. Chuck's last movie appearance, according to IMDB.com, was 5 years ago, and i don't see him making anything again anytime soon, so I guess my BRILLIANT idea about him reprising one of his best roles won't get off the ground. Ah, well. Pick up Silent Rage if you want a good action/horror movie, and mourn the decline of Chuck Norris's acting career.