CHUCK’S ROUNDHOUSE: Agent Recon (2024)

Following the non-event that was the 2005 release of “The Cutter,” Chuck Norris would essentially retire. He strapped on the cowboy boots for a small role in “The Expendables 2” seven years later. He provided a voice-only cameo in a 2015 episode of “The Goldbergs” before actually appearing on-screen in an episode of “Hawaii Five-0” five years after that. Mostly, Mr. Norris would amuse himself during his golden years by appearing in commercials. He hocked products like Mountain Dew, multiple video games, a Czech bank chain, United Healthcare, T-Mobile, Toyota and Mike Huckabee’s doomed presidential campaign. Almost all of these ads played more off the internet based Chuck Norris Facts than his actual action movie credentials. Which shows you what the guy was by this point: A dead meme that only amused the hyper-normies at ad agencies and their target audience of old people. Not the most graceful retirement for an action star but better than what happened to Seagal, I guess.  

This was before, in 2024, it was announced that the former Walker, Texas Ranger would be making a return to the world of cinema. That’s right, he was going to play himself in a jokey Czech horror/comedy in which Vanilla Ice gets top-billing. As of this writing, the sure-to-be future masterpiece “Zombie Plane” remains unreleased. However, Chuck also lent his talents to something called “Agent Recon” around the same time. To what do we owe this sudden re-emergence? Well, perhaps Chuck was aware that he wasn’t long for this world and wanted to add to his family's nestegg or something. Maybe he simply got bored in his old age. My personal theory is that his right-wing friends convinced him to dump all his savings into Crypto and, after that bubble popped, grandpa had to go back to work. 

It is a question worth asking but it is not, in fact, the question you should be asking about “Agent Recon.” The more pertinent quarry around this mysterious motion picture should be: Who is Derek Ting, the writer, director, producer, and star of the film? “Agent Recon” is actually the third entry in a series of science fiction/action movies Mr. Ting has similarly self-produced. It follows 2017’s “Agent,” which starred nobody famous, and 2021’s “Agent Revelation,” which at least roped in Michael Dorn. Unlike most low budget action stars on-the-rise, Ting’s background does not appear to be in competitive martial arts or stunt work. Instead, a cursory Google search informs me that he’s a former CNN producer, tech writer, and consultant for DoubleClicker and Mercer. He is not the CEO of free-mobile phone service TextNow, who happens to share his name. At first I thought maybe this was an example of some tech start-up guy trying to buy himself a low-budget movie career. No, it would seem that the Ting in question is a self-made guy trying to manifest a life as a direct-to-video action star. 

One suspects that Ting figured more people would see “Agent Recon” than its two prequels, which is why the film begins with a lengthy synopsis of previous events. Not that this makes the plot much easier to follow. As far as I can tell, “Agent Recon” is the story of Jim Yung, a once ordinary guy who gained superpowers after being exposed to an alien infection known as Ash. He combined this with an ability to manipulate the vital human life force known as Mana to gain more extraordinary abilities. He has used these powers to fight a shape-shifting alien race known as the Kinians, run from a secret government unit devoted to hunting aliens, and battle some sort of untrustworthy artificial intelligence. His mentor, Alastair, was seemingly killed. Now, Yung and his friends have somewhat reluctantly aligned himself with Colonel Green, a grizzled veteran searching for his daughter after an alien assault at a secret base in New Mexico. Along the way, an A.I. based on Alastair’s consciousness is uploaded into an android body. 

I will make no accusations against Derek Ting’s personal demeanor. (I’ll leave that up to the creators of this Change.Org petition that want to sue him for wasting public funds on his shitty movies.) If I had the means and drive to do so, perhaps I would also try and fashion an action hero status for myself. Nevertheless, “Agent Recon” does seem to be the self-serving fantasy of some guy, eager to build a comic book-like cinematic universe around himself with a convoluted lore. A lot of “Agent Recon” is devoted to explaining the movie’s back story and its various events. There’s a lot of chatter about DNA, A.I., aliens, conspiracy theories, this “Mana” thing, and the new and established characters’ histories. It’s all relatively incomprehensible, playing as the sort of thing an overly enthusiastic kid writing a fan fiction about the totally bad-ass new addition to his favorite anime or superhero team would come up with. In other words, the dense mythology of the “Agent” series is needlessly convoluted, endlessly talked up, and utterly meaningless to anyone that isn’t Derek Ting. 

That Ting’s film is so eager to describe the history and events of his universe is at odds with what we actually see on-screen. I’m not only referring to the obviously limited budgetary resources of “Agent Recon.” The movie’s aliens are mostly guy in gas masks. Its military bases look like generic Eastern European cities. The cast is small, the special effects are deeply unimpressive, the cinematography is heavy on aerial drone shots, and the editing is shaky. I’m pretty sure the big alien lair in the finale was created by generative A.I. As much as the script talks about the specifics of these extraterrestrial races and superpowers, the film mostly seems to be stapled together from unimaginative genre stock parts. The Kinians intruders are referred to as zombie-like, with their weakness being their livers instead of their brain, but act like the fodder in any low budget action movie. For all its ambitions, the film is mostly devoted to scenes of guys in military fatigues walking and shooting through darkly-lit buildings and forests.

Plot is not always important in action flicks, as long as the fights are good. Similarly, a derivative sci-fi or horror script can overcome those limitations with a properly energetic execution. Unfortunately, “Agent Recon” doesn’t have any of these things. Ting is so invested in his self-made mythos that a lot of the film is devoted to expanding on it. Because he has neither the money nor the imagination to properly depict these cosmic events, we get one tedious exposition dump after another. I was lost almost immediately but, by the time side characters are hacking into foreign networks and reading up on alien experiments, I was really lost. 

As for Ting’s abilities as a leading man and kick-puncher… Well, his website describes him as a martial artist. It’s fair to say that he’s a lot more adapt at fighting than an average slug like I am. He seems capable of pulling off a kick, punch, or swinging ax blow. However, there’s still an unavoidable awkwardness to his moves, a result of either the low budget production or Ting’s own inexperience. A scene where he rolls to the ground to pick up a shotgun is a good example of how “Agent Recon” desperately wants to convince us that Derek Ting is a total bad-ass but falls short of actually pulling that off. It’s hard to dismiss the feeling that this entire enterprise is the result of the man’s own ego. Especially when the film he wrote, directed, and produced has him inexplicably throwing Kamehames – he does the hand motion and everything – or intimidating bigger guys and generally depicting him as the most important human being in the universe. 

But the majority of people who watch “Agent Recon” aren’t going to care about any of that shit. They hadn’t heard of this Ting guy before watching it. No, what about Chuck Norris? Norris plays the result of some top secret alien engineering, an 84 year old man apparently being the robotic form that was decided upon. He first appears as an awkward held static shot of his face, the actor obviously having been photographed before a green screen. When he finally speaks, he sounds every bit like an old, old man whose frail and ancient body is barely holding itself together. He mostly says inspirational quotes to Ting’s character, the auteur casting one of his personal heroes as his own mentor. Several shots of Chuck from behind are clearly of an unmoving mannequin, suggesting he was only available to the production for a few days. Despite that, he does get some action beats to himself in the last act. In the finale, senior citizen Norris walks around and blasts indistinct aliens with a plastic-y looking chain gun. He looks off into the distance, a Joe Biden-esque sense of confusion on his face, as his not-exactly-whip-crack instincts have him very slowly pivoting around. I guess Chuck wanted to prove that he still “had it,” as he does do some fighting. Extremely awkward, sluggish fighting that amounts to some slow-mo punches and a few karate tosses, all of which are cut away from before we see Chuck himself and not a faceless stunt guy finish the blow. 

It is, in other words, about as embarrassing as you’d expect a great-grandfather still trying to be an action hero to be. Somehow, Derek Ting looked at an octogenarian Chuck Norris and decided that was the perfect guy to play an unstoppable cyborg. I guess Chuck has frequently been accused of being robotic. Norris is not the only washed-up action guy in this movie. Former “Beastmaster” Marc Singer plays Colonel Green. While no less insanely grizzled and wrinkly than Chuck, Singer does get more screen time. Not that you’re going to care about it, as the emotional plot of his daughter being rescued is hastily introduced half-way through and extremely sloppily executed. I will say that Singer is obviously a clear professional, delivering the bullshit dialogue he was given with, if not high energy, at least some degree of conviction.

During the press for the film, Ting insisted that Chuck Norris read the script in one session and loved it so much that he immediately agreed to participate in the project. This same anecdote also mentions that Chuck’s wife, a woman named Gena O’Kelley that is 23 years younger than him, sat the laptop before him on a flight. Which, when combined with Singer’s also rather sickly looking appearance, makes me wonder whether elder abuse isn’t the real culprit behind these guys appearing in a movie like this. Needless to say, the behind-the-scenes questions of “Agent Recon” are much more interesting than the largely boring, deeply inessential, mostly incoherent motion picture itself. I guess I can’t criticize Derek Ting for trying to fulfill his childhood dreams of being an action star. Go for it, my dude, I guess. However, he lacks the insane vision of an Edward D. Wood or Neil Breen. “Agent Recon” is kind of weird and a little funny but it’s never very entertaining or interesting. [3/10] 

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 1 outta 5]

[X] Facial Hair

[] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall

[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face

[] Shows Off His Hairy Chest

[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: The Cutter (2005)

By 2005, Chuck Norris was too old for this shit. “Walker, Texas Ranger” ended in 2001, after a nine season run that is frankly hard to believe. A mere four years later, there was an attempt to relaunch the show as a series of TV movies that did not get beyond the first installment. Chuck was well into the twilight of his career, doing shit like founding a short-lived fighting league, putting his name on books, and getting ironic cameos in big comedies. This was right before the internet turned him into a meme, signaling that he was truly a jokey relic of the past. The former Lone Wolf would basically retire after that... But not before starring in one more crappy, direct-to-video action movie. The story behind “The Cutter” is interesting but not that interesting. The film spent a decade in development before ending up at Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millennium Films. One presumes this is how the story of a diamond cutter who survived the Holocaust got transformed into a low budget Chuck Norris vehicle. It would, for many years, be the final starring role for the once Karate Champ. 

In the Sinai dessert, an archaeological team uncovers the mythical, bejeweled Breastplate of Aaron. Shortly afterwards, a man lands in a private glider, kills the dig team, and steals the holy relic. Meanwhile, in Spokane, Washington... John Shepherd is a private detective who specializes in finding missing people and rescuing kidnapped individuals. After a botched rescue attempt of a teenage girl results in her death, he feels immense guilt. Through a series of encounters, he makes the acquitance of Elizabeth Teller. She is the granddaughter of Isaac Teller, a Jewish jeweler and Holocaust survivor. While imprisoned in the camps, he was forced by Nazi officers to design a new gemstone cut formation. Now, decades later, the last surviving officer at the camp and his younger associate, the murderer from earlier, captured Isaac and demands he cut the twelve fabled stones of Aaron. Shepherd and his team are on the case. 

"The Cutter" is, from most perspectives, a fairly shoddy motion picture. Chuck's "Hero and the Terror" director Bill Tannen came back for this one. While Tannen's career isn't the most prestigious, he was still an industry veteran directing his tenth feature here. Despite that, an aura of cheapness floats over all of "The Cutter." I mean, how many action movies can you think of set in Spokane, Washington? Many scenes seem to take place in unassuming homes, apartments, and buildings. The climatic moment happens in a single room, a generic warehouse setting, while another prominent fight occurs at the back of a city bus. The film features some extremely annoying editing, indicative of the early 2000s, with many sped-up montages  in-between scenes set to fast paced music. There are whooshing sound effects, frantic cuts, and shifts between color and black-and-white. It feels like a desperate attempt to make a low budget and unambitious project seem much more trendy and stylish than it otherwise obviously is. The film ends on a literal freeze-frame shot, like the old TV shows it actually has much more in-common with than "2 Fast 2 Furious." 

"The Cutter's" low budget cheesiness veers towards unintentional hilarity very quickly. The aged jewels of brilliant color and clarity that the plot revolves around look a lot more like plastic toys. The sound design is amusingly cheap, every firearm making one of two different gunshot sounds. The first proper fight ends with the hysterical sight of a guy launched through a window and doing the Howie Scream, a stock sound effect rendered hilarious by both its instant recognition and tendency to seem out-of-place in any context. Inevitably, you quickly notice that this melee filled shoot-em-up seems to revolve around mostly older people. The title character is a Holocaust survivor who can't be any younger than eighty. (Performed by, of all people, Bernie Kopell.) The secret final boss of the movie is a similarly ancient man, played by actual Holocaust survivor and long tenured character actor Curt Lowens. The leading lady has grey hair but still gets a sexy shower scene, making me wonder if "The Cutter" was specifically made with the AARP crowd in mind. 

No old guy is more prominent in "The Cutter" than Chuck Norris, who would've been about sixty-four at the time of filming. His action scenes seem to involve a lot of him mostly standing stationary, punching or shooting at someone right in front of him. The bigger stunts he does do, like jabbing an attacker in the temples or rolling over a stone wall, look awkward. He is often replaced by a stunt double wearing a noticeable wig whenever the story requires him to kick higher than his hip or fall backwards. We aren't quite in Charles Bronson in "Death Wish V" levels of embarrassment here but the disconnect between the star's age and the expectations of the action genre are still unavoidable. Chuck spends a lot of this one sitting down, drinking tea, talking on the phone, or displaying an inexplicable knowledge of Biblical history.  A car chase amusingly features him only in quick cuts, clearly not actually behind the wheel of a speeding automobile. The climax, once again, has him disarming a bomb rather than delivering a killing blow. Probably the most unfortunate moment occurs during his trademark shirtless scene, his once taunt and muscled arms looking rather skinny and his famous manly chest now peppered with liver spots. 

While "The Cutter" is definitely a Chuck Norris vehicle, in the tradition of many geezer teasers to come, it does feature a younger actor in an equally big role. That would be Daniel Bernhardt, the man you get when your action movie is too shitty for even Jean-Claude Van Damme's lax standards. Bernhardt is the bad guy, a good use of his talents. He gets to put on a variety of different accents, sneers villainously at his opponents, and wears a number of disguises. Including, most incongruously, a kippah. Bernhardt hams it up nicely, enlivening an otherwise listless production. In fact, if you watch a lot of crappy action movies, there are a number of people here you'll recognize. Norris regular Marshall R. Teague is his contact on the police force. Chuck's brother Aaron has a bit part, getting to unexpectedly thrown out some fast punches of his own.  Tracy Scoggins has some belligerent sexual tension with Chuck in a few scenes. Former American Gladiator Deron McBee gets karate chopped in the throat. How much value a movie making you say "Hey, I know that guy!" when some mildly recognizable character actor walks on-screen is debatable but it further brightens up "The Cutter." 

Another kind of familiar face is Todd Jensen, a regular in movies made by Avi Lerner's Nu Image/Millennium Films slop factory. Lerner's fingerprints are on the film in another way. Having picked up the baton left by Golan and Globus, Lerner is also an Israeli nationalist whose low budget action schlock doubles as white-and-blue propaganda. "The Cutter" is not quite as blatant as "The Delta Force" but, like earlier Nu Image production "The Order," it does take the Exodus myth as historical fact. Having the Breastplate of Aaron be the main MacGuffin and Nazis be the bad guys make me wonder if this was, at one point in its long development history, another "Indiana Jones" rip-off. But Nazis always make good villains, the film's backstory of the Holocaust only seeming odd because it was made and ostensibly set in 2005. This is not a Zionist screed. It's a standard Nu Image, in the other way: Being really cheap and kind of bad. However, watching a senior citizen action star fumble through familiar beats while surrounded by enough funny, intentional or otherwise, moments and one or two Guys I Like doesn't make me regret watching it. [6/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 3 outta 5]

[X] Facial Hair

[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall

[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face

[X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest

[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: Bells of Innocence (2003)

The 1960s saw evangelical fundamentalists, Biblical literalists who rejected modern science and changing social ideology, grow more influential within American Protestant congregations. Their tenets include the spreading of the gospel, the conversion of non-believers, that every good thing that happens to you is an act of God, the end times are upon us, that Satan and his demons are active in the world, and the adoration of Christ and Him alone. This necessitated the creation of a Christian media, in opposition to a secular – and therefore sinful – media. What we now call the "faith-based" film industry began to take shape at the start of the seventies. While apocalyptic oddities like "If Footmen Tire, What Will Horses Do?" and "A Thief in the Night" soon emerged, this style of filmmaking has mostly been defined by banalities like "The Cross and the Switchblade." 

 

The modern Christian movie functions a lot like fetish pornography. It exists to serve its intended audience what they want to see and are already familiar with, at the sacrifice of complex narratives, quality acting, and realistic dialogue. (Also the budgets are usually comparable.) A year before "The Passion of the Christ" gave cinematic proselytizing its biggest moment, a much less notable Christian film was released straight-to-video for the intended audience of church goers, youth pastors, and blind grandmothers. "Bells of Innocence" would be of little notoriety for anyone outside this demographic if it wasn't for its top-billed actor. Chuck Norris became "born again" sometime in the mid-nineties. He began incorporating conservative Christian hysterics into "Walker" shortly after this, so it's not surprising he ended up in one of these. The film also starred his son Mike, his granddaughter Gabby, and frequent "Walker" guest star Marshall R. Teague, so I guess it was a family affair. 

The film follows the improbably named Jux Jonas, a man whose young daughter died after being hit by a car. That loss shattered his faith in God and now he's a suicidal alcoholic. Despite that, his devout friends Conrad and Oren talk him into flying them into Mexico, where they will distribute Bibles at a small ministry. Their plane breaks down in the middle of the Texas desert and they wander into a town called Ceres. The locals seem totally unaware and cut off from the outside world, react strangely to visitors, avoid all physical touching, and bare distinctive marks on their arms. Only a solitary rancher named Matthew offers any assistance. Jux meets Lyric, a little girl that reminds him of his lost daughter, and she beckons him to stay. That's because Ceres is actually run by demonically possessed humans, town elder Joshua being a literal minion of Satan. A war between good and evil has been playing out there for decades. Now, the fate of Jux's immortal soul is the latest battle in this conflict. 

I am, usually, a fan of films made outside of the Hollywood system. I have, from time to time, praised movies made by largely unprofessional crews that lack the polished attributes of your bigger budgeted productions. I admire the can-do spirit of artists with more of a dream than experience or money, pursuing it anyway. Any resulting jank usually becomes part of the charm of such a motion picture and the best of these can reach the level of stupefying outsider art. I suppose this same attitude could be applied to movies like "Bells of Innocence." Cinematographer Hamid Shams was a camera assistant on "Evil Dead II" and "Death Wish 3" and done some lo-fi TV stuff, so he wasn't exactly an amateur. Nevertheless, "Bells of Innocence" has a flat, colorless visual style that, on several occasions, lapses into shaky handheld work. A chase scene has the camera flipping back and forth, for one example of this awkwardness. This is emphasized by blunt editing, the cuts between scenes being so abrupt as to often become unintentionally funny. This is apparent from the very first scene, a mostly unconnected sequence of people running in the dark from some villains on horseback and running into Native Americans doing a ritual of some sort, that is incoherently assembled. (There's a smattering of indigenous characters in the film, so the Norris family hasn't totally let go of that fixation yet.) Director Alin Bijan, his second feature after an un-faith based 1995 skin flick, does not distinguish himself. 

More than any other technical deficiency, two factors make "Bells of Innocence" an especially difficult watch. The acting is quite poor, distressingly so. Mike Norris is a wooden actor who does not have the screen presence of his father. His delivery of dialogue is awkward and unconvincing. His attempts at bigger emotions feel stilted and forced. This is largely true of the rest of the cast. Carey Scott gives a very annoying performance as Oren, acting in a childish, mawkish fashion that honestly makes the character seem unaware of certain social cues. His reoccurring trait of telling a joke he never gets to finish, because people start randomly laughing before he gets to the punchline, is a very questionable choice. David A.R. White as Conrad always feels like he is reading a prepared speech from the pulpit, trying to invest it with deeper emotions he cannot summon, than someone acting out a character. This is true of most of the acting in "Bells of Innocence" and partially what marks it as an unprofessional, church basement production. You know something has gone very wrong when Chuck Norris gives the best, most relaxed and natural performance in your motion picture. 

This points towards the biggest problem with "Bells of Innocence" and the majority of so-called "faith-based" film making. This is not so much a movie as it is a sermon. The narrative is not told with the intention of invoking certain feelings or ideas in the viewer. The goal is not fleshing out characters, experiences, themes or moods. Instead, it's preaching, telling you exactly what it means and what you should think about these events, with no room for ambiguity or personal interpretation. The message relayed in "Bells of Innocence" is that the devil is real and apocalyptic war with the forces of evil is inevitable, Luckily, all you have to do to be on the winning side is accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, no matter what bad things happen to you. Jux's grief upon his daughter's senseless death would seem to present one of the most complicated aspects of faith: How can you believe in an all-good and all-loving God if life just constantly grinds you down and takes away the people you love? Rather than address this idea, such events are presented as temptations by Satan and his minions. Jux's faith is turned like a light switch, from Questioning God's Plan to Jesus Loves All the Little Children, during the key points in the film. The subtext, that it is God's will that people die and lives get ruined, is never addressed simply because he chooses God over the Devil. Why? Ostensibly because his experience in Ceres has proven to him that Jesus is the way but, in execution, it looks more like he simply changes his mind. To evangelicals, is faith just God saying "Trust me, bro, it'll all make sense" and taking him at his word? It is an attempted persuasion without nuance. 

Moreover, "Bells of Innocence" delivers this idea in as didactic a fashion as possible. Before the trio arrives in town, we get several scenes of the town's sinister elders discussing what is to happen. When the gang takes shelter in Chuck Norris' cabin, he flatly explains that he is an angel, the history of the town, and what this all forebodes. The heroes outright proclaim their faith in God, against the demonic villains' statements. With such a hamfisted approach, it is unsurprising that the film has no grasp on the subtleties necessary to create an effective horror movie. The film seems to think having someone's eyes glow red and a red skull appear over their faces is the height of terror, alongside other thoroughly unimpressive CGI effects. The script is generally inconsistent, how much the people in the town can or cannot touch an outsider seeming inconsistent, and is totally unable to build up any tension at all. After all, we know that God is Good and Jux's soul will be safe, so there's not much in the way of suspense. 

It should probably be unsurprising that "Bells of Innocence" also does not feature much in the way of the Chuck Norris action you might be hoping for. The most exciting thing he does is talk down a crowd of demonic meanies, projecting a bolt of light from his finger and making a guy groan and grimace. This is, admittedly, one of the fewer moments that made me laugh here. Otherwise, he shows up in a few scenes, hangs out with the protagonists, and drones out some exposition. I went into "Bells of Innocence" hoping it would make me chuckle more often but it is mostly a tedious affair. The first act is extremely slow, as the film takes far too long to get all its characters in place, has them wait around for a while, before the plot finally begins to move. The film seems to reach its climax before chugging forward to a proper ending, the story heading into the credits with little drive or energy. While I'm sure some films made within the Sunday School approved method feature better acting, sturdier writing, and zippier pacing than this motion picture, my impression of the genre is that it's mostly stuff like this: Preachy and limp and boring, with one or two actors who were once semi-relevant but got saved and are now doing shit like this. I like my Chuck Norris movies with more punching and kicking than preaching. [3/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 2 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[] Shows Off His Hairy Chest
[X] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: The President's Man: A Line in the Sand (2002)

Finding ratings information for obscure television movies from twenty-four years ago is not always easily done. However, I can deduce a few things about the reception “The President's Man” got from audiences in 2000. It drew enough eyeballs for CBS to move forward with the project but not so many that a series order was immediately given. Instead, the greenlight was received for essentially a second pilot. This is typically what happens when a network sees something promising in a show but agrees that some bugs need to be ironed out. It doesn't always happen in public – and then archived forever via home video – as was the case here. “The President's Man: A Line in the Sand” would feature a lighter tone than the first and would recast the younger leading man opposite Chuck Norris. Another big difference was a reflection of how the world had changed between 2000 and January of 2002, when “A Line in the Sand” aired. This is the film that would bring the old school action style of Chuck Norris into the strange, strange era of post-9/11 jingoism. 

It would seem about three years have passed since the events of the first "President's Man" film. Deke Slater is now fully established as the American president's personal man of action, with Joshua McCord and his daughter Que acting as assistants. The U.S.A. is currently under threat by Fadhal Rashid, the head of a militant Islamic extremist faction. Rashid's followers have obtained a small nuclear bomb and successfully smuggled it into the United States, with plans to detonate it in a large city. Slater is air-dropped into the Middle East, where he blasts into Rashid's compound and captures the terrorist leader. However, Rashid's followers, most prominently his son Abir, remain at large and await a coded message from their leader. The plan becomes to sneak the dirty bomb into Dallas before setting it off. Slater and McCord leap into action to find the nuke, disarm it, and make the dastardly terrorists pay. 

If the above plot synopsis didn't indicate as much, "A Line in the Sand" is a distinctly different brand of propaganda from the first "The President's Man" film. The original had the good guys up against South American drug runners and nebulous "terrorists" of uncertain allegiance, connected to elderly enemies left over from the Cold War. Pretty old hat by 2000. The sequel, meanwhile, positions a seemingly Sunni Islamic jihadist as the mastermind behind a plot to kill countless Americans. Al-Qaeda and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center are mentioned by name. The words "weapons of mass destruction" are spoken. Rashid is described as Pakistani like Ramzi Yousef, the organizer of the aforementioned attack. However, his tendency to issue video recorded statements from his secret hiding place and his connections to Saudi Arabia also makes him a clear Osama bin Ladin parallel, already a notorious figure by the late nineties. What is not mentioned is 9/11. IMDb's frequently inaccurate information lists "A Line in the Sand's" filming date as May of 2001. If that is correct is true, any relation to the events that would happen later that year were unintentional. (Assuming you don't believe in certain conspiracy theories.) 

However, the film still operates totally in-line with American attitudes after the towers fell. The bad guys are all brown religious extremists who hate the U.S.A. and everyone who lives there as a course of belief. We are the infidels that should be scourged with holy fire. Certainly no mention is made of how the foreign policy of the U.S. and our allies might have radicalized any persons, real or fictional, against us. There are two very weird scenes in "The President's Man II." The first sees McCord – now upgraded to a college professor on all foreign cultures, I guess, not just the Japanese – argue against a student who believes we should indiscriminately nuke all of the Middle East. Chuck's character clarifies that violent terrorists make up a tiny percentage of all Muslims worldwide. That we should not correlate an entire faith with the actions of a few extremists. Later, an American Muslim fires back at Rashid, saying that his bloody schemes are actually in defiance of Muhammad's teachings and that Islam is a religion of peace. These moments stand in stark contrast to the multiple scenes of our white heroes kicking and gunning down brown baddies in turbans and robes. 

These scenes remind me of a speech George W. Bush made in the aftermath of 9/11, denouncing anti-Islamic prejudice here and abroad. Words he presumably spoke before approving military actions in Afghanistan that contributed to the estimated 46,319 civilians killed during the resulting twenty year war. In other words, cinematic moments such as these and their real life parallels read as deeply insincere. "A Line in the Sand" is a film about a bad-ass American being dropped into the Middle East and single-handedly capturing a terrorist leader. Its back half features scenes of red-blooded patriots extra-judicially kicking the asses of stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorists. These are very weird contexts in which to place pleas that your nearest masque has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda. This is aggravated propaganda meant to inflame American hearts and minds against our nebulous enemies, that would soon be the central targets of the war on terror that the U.S. enacted shortly after this movie was filmed. 

I must also say that "The President's Man: A Line in the Sand" is not especially good propaganda.  In the first film, Dylan Neal played Deke Slater as a hot-headed, standoffish jerk who was only beginning to defrost. The character is recast with Judson Mills in this sequel. This was supposedly because of scheduling conflicts. However, Mills plays Slater in such a wildly different manner from Neal that it might as well be a different character, suggesting that this was a deliberate change. Mills' take on the guy is largely jovial, often making sarcastic observations. I would not say this is an improvement, as Mills is actually more wooden and stiff in his acting than Neal was. He's a bright-eyed hunk of meat with a strong chin but delivers all his dialogue like a surprised baby. There's little charisma or screen presence. I did not find myself invested in the character or enchanted by Mills' acting, making it hard to care too much about any of the shit that happens here. 

Judson Mills' appearance here follows a starring role in the last two seasons of “Walker, Texas Ranger.” One assumes that his character was introduced on that show to do the kind of action hero stunts that Chuck Norris was aging out of. That is obviously the case here too. Norris has surprisingly little to do in the first half of “A Line in the Sand.” He spends a lot of the movie standing behind a desk, looking at a screen, and speaking into a com-link. Mills, meanwhile, is doing all the running, leaping, kicking, and punching. I figured this would be the state of affairs throughout all of “A Line in the Sand,” the then-61 year old Chuck Norris having retired to mentor roles. However, the last act of the sequel sees Joshua McCord surprisingly joining the action. This got my hopes up that we might actually see Chuck Norris do some Chuck Norris shit in this motion picture. Unfortunately, “The President's Man II” was made during the era when no attempt at all was being made to disguise that its action star was an old, old man now. The film sees Norris' character doing shit like triple back flips through the air or leaping several feet onto a pipe without any issue. The most action Norris himself has is defusing a bomb, a protracted sequence if I've ever seen one. 

In fact, the action scenes in “A Line in the Sand” are some really silly business. When Slater is fighting off bad guys, his favorite move is a somersault kick that seems to violate the law of gravity to me. During the aforementioned triple back flip, Chuck's character is also accurately firing a gun. The film gets goofier as it goes on, the finale featuring the heroes delivering superhuman blows that launch their opponents across the room. All I can figure is this was some half-ass attempt to catch up with the exaggerated action theatrics of “The Matrix” and the wave of films it inspired. In general, the film is infected with a fatal cheesiness that outstrips the original. There's a random jet pack sequence. Multiple training montages or sparring sessions are scored to hilariously bad rap songs. While some camp value can be derived from ridiculous moments, the impression the film leaves a viewer with is that the project's vision far outstripped its available resources. 

Truthfully, most of “The President's Man II: A Line in the Sand” is dull. The action scenes are repetitive and rare. Far more of the film is devoted to people standing around and talking about shit. Its obviously Islamophobic content is interesting from an anthropological perspective, as a relic of a time that we have hopefully moved past, but is just reheated bullshit in execution. While I can imagine a perspective “President's Man” series further building off the national mood of blind jingoism and paranoia that would follow, not even that was enough to get the public interested in this one. The film would be the end of this particular franchise. More dire than the already pretty lame original, this film represents the point where it dawned on me that watching all of Chuck Norris movies might have been a mistake. [4/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 2 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[] Shows Off His Hairy Chest
[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

 

 

 

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: The President's Man (2000)

After nine seasons and two hundred and three episodes, “Walker, Texas Ranger” would hang up his silver star in May of 2001. Presumably because he had roundhouse kicked every bank robber, crime boss, drug runner, human trafficker, Neo-Nazi, Satanist and skinwalker in Texas. Chuck Norris was not going to take it easy though. Instead, a year before “Walker” ended, he was already trying to get a follow-up going. CBS would air “The President's Man” on April 2nd of 2000, Norris Brothers Production having their logo right at the front of the presentation. As with “Logan's War,” the perspective series being set up by this TV movie would place Norris in more of a mentor role, while a younger, more agile performer shared the spotlight. In this case, Dylan Neal, another stout-chinned hunk of meat TV actor whose career never quite took off. Did it work better on a second go-around? 

It turns out that the President of the United States has a special operative, a secret agent infiltrator and all-around bad-ass, that answers to him and him alone. The current President's Man is Joshua McCord, a Vietnam veteran, college professor of Asian history, and martial arts expert. After rescuing the First Lady from South American terrorists, McCord fears he is getting too long in the teeth. Along with his daughter, Que, they seek out a protege. They find one in Sgt. Deke Slater, an Army Ranger who got dishonorably discharged for punching out a commanding officer and is now serving a thirty year prison sentence for killing a White Supremacist in a jail yard brawl. Slater is sprung from jail and taken under McCord's wing, the hot head bristling against the expert during the grueling training. Soon, the team is back in South America, seeking out a kidnapped nuclear physicist being blackmailed into building a nuke for the drug cartel. A cartel led by a former South Vietnamese general that McCord has unfinished business with.

 

The opening of "The President's Man" features Chuck Norris parachuting out of a stealth bomber, dispatching some baddies via knife throws and window dives, before paragliding the First Lady to safety. As this happens, a musical sting on the soundtrack that sounds suspiciously like the James Bond theme plays. This clarifies "The President's Man" as an attempt to do some super spy antics on an extremely TV budget. The drop out of the airplane features some sketchy CGI. Unlike the always horny Bond, McCord never makes any moves towards the totally grandmotherly First Lady, because that wouldn't fit television standards. For a movie about global politics and black operations, the sets and locations are seriously limited. The top secret training center for the presidential hit squad looks a lot like a suburban gym or recreational center. They hang off monkey bars, get kicked in the chest while doing pull-ups, and throw knives at spinning targets. A lot of the international missions seem to take place in sparsely forested fields surrounding farm houses. I really wouldn't expect a movie about the president's personal Rambo to feature this many scenes in offices, ranches, and sheds. 
 

The cheap production values of "The President's Man" point towards the film's status as basically the pilot for a series and not a work meant to stand alone. You also see this in the story structure. Within this ninety minute runtime, we see: The rescue of the First Lady, the botched mission that got Slater kicked out of the Army and dumped in prison, his first mission with McCord to snatch a Senator's daughter from a weird cult compound, and the saving of the nuclear scientists from some sadistic foreigners. Each of these story threads essentially stand alone, making "The President's Man" feel less like a single narrative and more like a couple of scripts for different episodes shoved together. The connecting fiber is devoted to the repetitive scenes of Slater training with McCord and his daughter, the kind of standard sequences used to establish the general set-up of a weekly show at the start of every hour. If "Logan's War" was an attempt to squeeze a whole backstory for a hero and his first adventure into one movie, "The President's Man" is an even shakier test-run for a concept more ready to air every Wednesday at 9PM than be watched as a complete story in its own right. 

One of the movies that makes up the episodic structure of “The President's Man” is basically a TV series version of “Missing in Action.” It's interesting how the television star portion of Norris' career saw him recycling ideas from his movie roles. “Walker” was “Lone Wolf McQuade” while “Logan's War” drew a little from “The Delta Force” and “Good Guys Wear Black.” This one makes McCord a Vietnam veteran. Much like Braddock, he has a Vietnamese wife and a child with her. As in “Missing in Action III,” she's murdered. To make the connection all-but-explicit, Soon-Tek Oh plays the killer who has returned, after previously appearing as the sadistic general in “Missing in Action II.” Chuck was too old at this point to take on-screen abuse so Dylan Neal gets strung up by the villains, shirtless and soaking wet, for an electrified torture scene. Braddock had a son that he didn't know about for years while McCord has a daughter that has grown up with him, Jennifer Tung playing the female lead. “The President's Man” also emphasizes this Chuck hero as a master of martial arts, who even gives lectures on samurai culture and practices zen meditation. Nevertheless, it would not take a lot of editing to make this a years later TV continuation of the “Missing in Action” flicks.

Does any of this prove especially entertain or interesting? The bits where Chuck is playing a wise sensai, especially when he's simply reading a book while his protege blusters around, are mildly amusing. While most of his kicks and punches continue to come from off-screen at this point, he does get a semi-decent fight with Soon-Tek Oh. The opening incursion he does got me to smile once or twice. Unfortunately, the action throughout is mostly extremely unremarkable. As a lead, Dylan Neal is astonishingly uninteresting. He's got a swell chin and a heroic build but little in the way of charisma or screen presence, instead merely acting like a generic tough guy. This is most apparent in the training montages, of which are there are many and all of them are quite dramatically inert. Jennifer Tung is a little more interesting and it was nice to see Stuart Whitman, in his final role, as Chuck's mentor. Sadly, most everything about “The President's Man” resists being memorable or compelling at all.

The greatest value “The President's Man” has might be as unintentional comedy. The film features an extremely corny inspirational rock song during its training montage, both of which made me laugh from how repetitive they are. Another quirk that's impossible not to notice is the awful sound design. Every punch sounds like a thunder crack, which because especially funny when Neal is driving several into a random goon's face at once. In general, this one is very cheap, extremely derivative and lame in its narrative, and doesn't present us with any characters to care about much. It's directed like an unambitious episode of television, which is more-or-less what it is. I guess it's a little more entertaining than “Logan's War,” if only becomes Chuck has more to do – despite really, really starting to show his age – and at least it's not 70% set-up. Consider this damning with the faintest of praise. [5/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 3 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[] Shows Off His Hairy Chest*
[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

*Chuck has a shirtless scene but, extremely distressingly, he has obviously shaved! 

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: Logan's War: Bound by Honor (1998)

By 1998, “Walker, Texas Range” had been running for seven seasons. This was clearly a deal that had worked out for Mr. Norris and his bosses at CBS. Why not expand this surely profitable partnership some? That year would see the network airing “Martial Law,” a similar series mixing police procedural elements with martial arts and starring an action icon: Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan's old pal. While not a direct spin-off, Sammo would crossover with “Walker” and the show was clearly an attempt to recreate its success. A direct “Walker” spin-off would follow next year, with “Sons of Thunder.” That program only ran for six episodes but at least it made it to series. The same cannot be said for “Logan's War: Bound by Honor,” a TV movie Norris co-starred in that aired after a new “Walker” episode on November 1st of '98. 

Logan Fallon is the ten year old son of a district attorney. The boy seemingly has psychic premonitions of danger. His dad prepares a case against gangster Sal Mercado, despite his son's warning. This leads to the Fallon family being assassinated, Logan as the sole survivor. He's adopted by his uncle Jake, a former Army Ranger/kickboxing expert who has retired to a horse ranch following years of adventures. Logan swears vengeance against the mobsters who killed his parents and sister. Uncle Jake teaches him everything he knows, Logan following in his footsteps by becoming an Army Ranger. After returning home, Logan goes undercover in the Chicago mob, posing as a hit man. His final plan is to infiltrate the Mercado operation until he's close enough to take out Sal himself. 

By 1998, Chuck Norris would be pushing sixty. While “Walker” would run for another two seasons, it was clear that the action star could not pull off those roundhouse kicks and spin punches with quite the same level of limberness as he did in his glory days. Obviously, the instinct is to pass the baton onto to the next generation of acrobatic brawlers who can't act. Thus, “Logan's War” sees Norris stepping into a mentor role. The title character is played by Eddie Cibrian, Chuck mostly appearing at the beginning and end of the film. Honestly, it's a shift that Norris had been building towards for a long time. He was already depicting himself as a teacher to younger characters in “The Hitman,” “Sidekicks,” and “Forest Warrior.” Amusingly, while the film mostly sees Chuck passing on his knowledge and teaching Cibrian his bad-ass ways, he does leap right back into action at the end. In fact, “Logan's War” sees Chuck pulling off his trademark move of jump-kicking through a car's windshield. The implication is clear: Younger dudes must appear to fill these roles but that doesn't mean grandpa still can't kick some ass too, presumably in a reoccurring guest role in future episodes. 

While the star's production company would come onto “Walker” after the premise had already been conceived, “Logan's War” is based on a story by the Norris brothers. This means that, while the aging Lone Wolf does not play the title character, Logan is still blatantly a Chuck Norris type hero. Uncle Jake is a cowboy and an Army Ranger and an expert in melee combat. He passes all these skills onto Logan, who has a glorious and commendable career in the Army as well as being highly skilled in kicking and fighting. “Logan's War” also has the new guy involved in a very Norris-like subplot, wherein he defends a troubled woman and her young son from an abusive, shit-head boyfriend. This plot point contributes to the story in no meaningful way, there strictly to show audiences how noble and tough this guy is. That the script goes the extra mile and gives Logan an actual superpower is almost unnecessary. He's already hyper-capable and able to fight his way out of any situation.

Unsurprisingly, this means that Logan's precognitive abilities basically disappear from the story about half-way through. Why the guy has some sort of Spidey Sense is never explained. This is another symptom of “Logan's War” making its hero such a talented guy. The script is hopelessly top-heavy, as it sets up all of Logan's back story. First the extensive flashbacks to establish his need for vengeance. Then the lengthy training and sparring sessions and brave army record. By the time Logan is actually infiltrating the mob, “Bound by Honor” is already half-way over. The guy's trip into the criminal underground doesn't amount to much beyond some rough-housing, a quickly executed initiation ritual, and one hit. Is that all it takes to become a made man? When he pulls a gun on all the gangsters and reveals his true identity, nobody seems that shocked. Probably because they barely know this guy and have little reason to trust him anyway. 

Indeed, why should the audience give a shit about Logan either? Eddie Cibrian does not have the action star legacy of Chuck Norris. He was predominantly a pretty boy TV guy, having previously starred on “The Young and the Restless,” “Sunset Beach,” and the supernatural investigation spin-off of “Baywatch.” He can convincingly deliver a kick. Or at least swap places with a stunt double decently. He simply doesn't have much charisma. This pairs with a presentation that is nothing but workmanlike. Director Michael Preece was a TV lifer, whose most prominent work includes seventy episodes of “Walker” and sixty of “Dallas.” Which is to say that “Logan's War” never looks anything more than average, the blocking being extraordinarily standard and the imagery largely bland. I'm honestly surprised that the film features some passable action in its back half. When Chuck is punching and kicking, the film almost starts to feel a little more lively. 

While “Logan's War: Bound by Honor” ends with its title character getting his revenge, the film was clearly still designed to launch a series. The final scene has the protagonist being asked what he plans to do next, the obvious implication being that more adventures are to come. With Chuck still starring on “Walker” at the time, I suppose Uncle Jake would have only made occasional guest appearances. We'll never know, since no further installments followed. Considering how hard the film leans into the cowboy angle, not much effort was taken to avoid comparisons to “Walker” anyway. Mostly thanks to a story more focused on set-up than pay-off and a lead lacking any charm, “Logan's War” is a snooze. I'm glad Chuck got to fly through the wind shield of a car one more time though. [4/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 5 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest*
[X] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

*Wears a low-cut tank top during a sparring scene, the Carpet of Virility briefly visible

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: Forest Warrior (1996)

As a fan of low budget filmmaking – especially when it spotlights new voices or contains a subversive message – I do not believe there is any shame in going "direct-to-video." ("Direct-to-VOD" or "Direct-to-Tubi" being the modern equivalent.) It is a totally valid release strategy for a number of worthwhile movies. However, especially during the Blockbuster Video peak years of the nineties, the bias against films foregoing a theatrical run wasn't entirely unwarranted. Many lazy cash-in sequels, unambitious action flicks, horror films of debatable merit, and exceedingly lame kids movies were released in this manner. You'd think, with a steady TV gig on “Walker, Texas Ranger,” Chuck Norris wouldn't need to do any of that stuff circa 1995. I guess not, as the former karate champ starred in “Forest Warrior,” his first direct-to-video release, around that time. To add to that indignity, this latest collab with his brother Aaron was strictly within the kiddie camp. The resulting film is widely regarded as a low point for a star whose work rarely attracted critical praise in the first place. 

Near the Tanglewood forest, a group of children composed of Austene, Justin, Lewis, and brothers Logan and Brian gather around a camp fire. An old man named Clovis relates a local legend to them. The story goes that, back in the frontier days, a man named Jebediah McKenna lived in the woods. His wife, a Native American woman, grew sick and he rushed off to retrieve some medicine for her. This is when he was attacked by bandits in the woods, physically beating them back but still being gravely injured. Rolling into the river and near death, the forest spirits revived McKenna. They gave him the ability to change into animals and made him the ghostly protector of the forest. The kids think its only a story. The next day, the youths discover a fort in the woods and make it their new club house. At the same time, a logging company owned by the greedy Travis Thorne intends to cut the forest down, much to the protest of the locals. It's not long before the loggers and the kids come into conflict. Luckily for the children, the spirit of Jebediah McKenna is there to protect them and defend the forest. 

For most of its runtime, “Forest Warrior” is an almost insufferably mawkish presentation. The kids are all wide-eyed moffats, their actions and dialogue calculated for maximum adorableness. They spent much of the movie interacting with a bear cub they name Rags, who seems to rarely share actual screen-time with the child actors. Every facet of their lives and existence seem tied to this forest and their club house. Only Austene's life gets any additional depth. She has an often absent, usually intoxicated father. This subplot crops up for a few scene, an attempt to add even more syrupy emotion to the story, before the business in the woods is returned to. The villains are all two-dimensional bad guys, cartoonishly dumb and wicked who never pause at the thought of attacking or blowing up kids. Travis Thorne makes sure to announce that he doesn't intend to hire locals for his mill, because he cares so little about the near-by town. The bone-deep corniness of this writing peaks during the climatic montage of the youths sabotaging the baddies' vehicles, sticking potatoes in their tail pipes and boards with nails under their tires.

That hokey quality penetrates into every aspect of “Forest Warrior.” The musical score by Bill Elliot is composed of a few melodies that are repeated throughout. Every time the villains or the mill are introduced, a thumping Dr. Robotnik-esque theme plays. Every time Chuck kicks into action, a hard rock theme picks up for a few minutes. Most of Elliot's prior credits are Disney Channel Originals, which is what this music sounds made for. The film is often broken up by reaction shots of various animals or repetitive montages of the inner workings of the mill, all evident attempts to pad the run time out. The writing is preachy and awkward, with the opening prologue going on for ten whole minutes. The lameness of the film seems to suck down the talent of everyone involved. João Fernandes has long since proven himself a talented cinematographer, doing good and sometimes great work on past Chuck Norris gigs. However, even his skills seem half-hearted here, “Forest Warrior” often looking flat in its imagery with blanket lighting.

That is what ninety percent of the experience of watching “Forest Warrior” is like, overly cutesy kids movie antics supported by writing and production values that can best be described as workmanlike and worst as tedious. The remaining ten percent, however, is composed of moments so preposterous, that they can't help but be amusing. This largely means the action scenes. A red tail hawk swoops towards some logging company stooges only to turn into Chuck Norris delivering a flying kick. The film then immediately launches into a fast-paced action sequence, scored to that corny rock riff, and suddenly feels injected with caffeine. Other highlights include Chuck stopping a chainsaw blade with his bare hand and turning into bear via some underwhelming digital matting. He also grabs a bad guy and stares intensely into his eyes, until the film inverts, in what I can only compare to Ghost Rider's Penance Stare. The only non-Chuck related moment of goofy awesomeness in “Forest Warrior” is when an extremely underwhelming rock song on the soundtracks prompts all the lumberjacks to play their tools of deforestation like instruments. The fight scenes aren't great or anything. As in “Top Dog,” we are thoroughly in the era where Chuck's kicks, spins, and leaps mostly seem to be shot in long shots, close-ups on feet or fists, or with his back otherwise turned to the camera. However, these brief flashes of absurd actions still represent the few times “Forest Warrior” awakens from its sleepy, listless ambiance. 

There's only one other mildly interesting thing about “Forest Warrior.” Much like “Top Dog,” the film represents a now bygone time when even right-wing types like Chuck Norris could agree with the libs on certain topics. After fighting racists and Nazis, Chuck is now here to defend the environment. It's a natural extension of the star's ongoing Native American mysticism gag, which “Forest Warrior” is unsurprisingly heavy on. He's protecting the woods and animals here, like some kind of gosh darn tree-huggin' hippy. He goes so far as to theatrically snap a rifle in half, something I think would get you ex-communicated from the Republican party in 2026. Not that “Forest Warrior's” environmental message is especially well thought-out. When your loggers are cartoonishly evil buffoons, it doesn't leave room for any genuine insight. I think “FernGully” is a deeper reflection on the deforestation issue. Still, the film does represents a more innocent time. When macho ass-kickers were also rugged, salt-of-the-earth, cowboy, forest hermit types that acknowledged you shouldn't cut down every tree or slaughter every animal, before internet con-men completely took over that corner of the American psyche. 

Not that Chuck seems all that invested in “Forest Warrior.” For much of the film, he looms in the distance, watching over the children and trees, like some sort of fur-wearing, high-kicking Jesus. When called upon to speak any dialogue, Chuck's delivery is of a stiffness not seen since the “Way of the Dragon” days. A random moment when he teaches a kid how to kick someone in the head represents the sole time he has any spark in his eyes here. Maybe he did this one as a favor to Aaron? There are some notable names in the cast. Roscoe Lee Brown is the storytelling old man, his sagacious voice managing to make this stupid bullshit sound half-way believable. Terry Kiser plays the main villain, mugging and hamming up to such a degree as to make his performance in “Friday the 13th Part VII” seem subtle in comparison. Michael Beck is the main kid's alcoholic dad, Loretta Swit shows up as someone's mom, George Buck Flower is briefly here. It all suggest that “Forest Warrior” had enough money behind it to not look and feel so drab and boring for most of its runtime. 

The film was produced by Avi Lerner, the Israeli-born and South African-based producer who got his start with Cannon before launching his own production company, Nu Image/Millennium Films. Lerner and his company would basically keep making the kind of action schlock that Cannon had success with into the nineties and 2000s, on considerably lower budgets and without much of the flair. “Forest Warrior” doesn't feature the Nu Image logo, being filmed in Oregon rather than overseas, but it still feels a lot like that kind of production. Presumably, Chuck's commitments to “Walker, Texas Ranger” is what kept him from making more shit for those guys. You can cut together about five minutes of amusing moments from “Forest Warrior” but, as a feature length motion picture, it's difficult to recommend. I won't say yet if this is the nadir of Norris' career, as we've still got some dire looking shit to wade through, but it is a fairly steep fall-off from the heights of his eighties cult classics. [5/10]

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 3 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[] Shows Off His Hairy Chest
[X] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: Top Dog (1995)

 

1948 would see the release of “The Naked City.” While it seems unlikely to me that this was the first movie to feature two mismatched cops investigating a crime together, influential filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, Norman Jewison, and Walter Hill have all cited it as an inspiration. Hill's 1982 hit “48 Hrs." would prove that the premise could be a major box office winner. The producer of that film later made the similar “Lethal Weapon,” which was an even bigger success. After that, the buddy cop formula became inescapable in the eighties and nineties. To the point that increasingly higher concept variations arose. Such as: What if one of the cops was a dog? That seemingly improbable premise powered two separate movies in 1989. “Turner & Hooch” and “K-9" were mostly distinguished by whether the human or the dog were the straight-laced one or the wild card. “Turner & Hooch” was co-written by Michael Blodgett, who wrote the novel that became the Chuck Norris vehicle, “Hero and the Terror.” In what surely must be a coincidence, Chuck Norris would also headline a film with a nearly identical premise to Blodgett's cop dog movie five years later. “Top Dog” represented the action star's extremely late entry into this sub-sub-genre. 

Sgt. Swanson and his loyal mutt, Reno, are on the trail of a white supremacist sect that has been planting bombs around their city. Swanson tracks down the group responsible, both him and Reno getting a bullet for their troubles. Reno pulls through but his person does not. Later, loose cannon cop Jake Wilder is assigned the same case. Which means he is also paired up with Reno. The cop and the dog do not get along at first, the man bothered by the canine's seemingly smart-ass attitude. However, they soon close in on the Neo-Nazi terrorists behind the bombings. They quickly come into possession of a notebook that contains the list of targets the racist sect intends to explode next. Such as the upcoming Coalition for Racial Unity, a high profile gathering attended by several prominent public figures. Cop and cop dog race against time to save the day. 

While by no means a master thespian, Chuck Norris had proven to have a little bit of range by 1995. “Firewalker” didn't impress me much but Chuck was likable in it. He could sell a funny one-liner from time to time. "Walker, Texas Ranger" had turned him into a reliable TV presence. Unfortunately, “Top Dog” sticks Norris in the role of straight man against a rascally pup. Meaning he's mostly hammering the note of being annoyed or grumpy for the majority of the movie. Norris can't seem to perform this emotion in any way besides scowling and grumbling. Considering Chuck's charm actually lies in his down-home approachability, having him play a jerk takes away most of what makes likable. That a scene occurs where Wilder threatens to shoot the dog in the head, going so far as to unholster his gun, shows a major miscalculation happened somewhere. Norris seems genuinely angry and mildly unhinged, not comically bemused. 

That Chuck's bluster is extra blustery here stands in contrast to "Top Dog" basically being a family movie. Film producers figured out a long time ago that putting a cute animal in your movie all but guarantees an audience, no matter how underwhelming the rest of the antics might be. The role of Reno is essayed by two shaggy canines, Digby and Betty. Affable enough dogs, I've no doubt, but the amusement factor they provide on-screen is not that memorable. The biggest laugh in the movie might've been unintentional, when the dog performs Chuck's trademark slow motion dive through a window. Otherwise, Reno eating his partner's rotisserie chicken, dropping a box on a bad guy's head, or running off with a scarf that seemingly belongs to the Pope are lame slapstick set up in a belabored manner. There's a kid in the movie too, of course. Future "So Weird" cast member Erik von Detton is the kid in question, a subplot designed to tug at the heart strings without serving the story much otherwise. This is standard sad kid/cute dog content and similar scenes could be found in a number of underachieving family film slop in the nineties. The montage of the mutt getting into adorable shenanigans and trying on different outfits at a county fair is especially generic. 

That "Top Dog" is so indistinguishable from Disney Channel fair makes the seriousness with which it approaches the antagonists surprising. Nineties action movies could no longer invoke the Soviet Union as an easily booed bad guy and Middle Eastern radicals would not emerge as the primary cultural boogeyman until the next decade. The 1992 stand-off at Ruby Ridge and subsequent militia movement in America made right-wingin', bitter-clingin', proud gun clingers an acceptable target for action films that couldn't afford to shoot in Ireland. "Top Dog" features a group of White Supremacists who target homes in black neighborhoods or synagogues. Key scene has Kai Wulff as the organization's leader Sieg Heiling or delivering a speech about planning to unite real life Neo-Nazi organizations like Church of the Creator and the Aryan Nation. The climatic terrorist attack takes place on 4/20, because it's Hitler's birthday and not because Nazis hate pot smokers. All of this points towards "Top Dog's" actually doing some research into white supremacy. The fact that this is dropped into the middle of what is basically a kids' movie is unexpected and tonally baffling. You'd expect the villain in a movie like this to be evil dog catchers, not realistic depictions of active militant hate groups. Despite depicting the racist bad guys as sincerely dangerous, they are also buffoonish clowns at times, literally in one scene. (Which I guess is realistic, the buffoon part, not the clown part.)

This is not the only weird tonal shift in the movie. Chuck Norris co-headlining a movie with a rambunctious dog shows that we are clearly in the more undignified chapter of his career. Despite that, the action in "Top Dog" is still shockingly good. The opening scene features a massive explosion, during a time when you really had to blow shit up to get an effect like that. There are two car chases of note, one of which ends in a fiery crash. While he's not piling up corpses like James Braddock, Chuck still seemingly fatally wounds several enemies during the climatic shoot-out. The dog gets a kill too, playfully pushing a Nazi from a rooftop, which is more bizarre. You can tell Norris' age was starting to catch up to him, as the fight scenes feature more moments where his back is turned away from the camera or shot from a distance, to disguise stuntmen. However, the fighting is still decent, especially when Norris beats down the main villain at the end. That features one of his trademark moves that we haven't seen in a while, snapping an opponent's bludgeon in two and taking the splintered wood for himself. It's truly unexpected that this features some of the better fight choreography of his nineties era. 

The above-average quality of those pyrotechnics and fisticuffs plus the contrast between the plausible bad guys and otherwise comedic approach almost makes "Top Dog" an intriguing curiosity. Unfortunately, that first half is uniformly dull. The pooch provided pratfalls do not amuse. Chuck genuinely seems unhappy to do the film. At least we can be assured that, no matter how shitty Chuck's politics got in real life, at least he agreed that Nazis are bad. The film had the misfortune of coming out nine days after the Oklahoma City bombing, making its choice in villains especially out-of-step with its cutesy touches. That emphasizes the weirdness of "Top Dog," a movie that is otherwise too lame to defend. [5/10] 

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 4 outta 5]
[X] Facial Hair
[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy's Face
[X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest
[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup