Watching your way through a movie star's entire career allows you to see how their style and screen persona evolved. There's always been a bit of a contrast between Chuck Norris: Memetic Bad-Ass, as depicted in his more ultra-violent eighties action-fests, and the distinctly Americana-infused cowboy do-gooder of “Walker, Texas Ranger.” The actor intentionally softening his image in the late eighties also, probably not coincidentally, dovetailed with his own brother taking over directorial duties on most of his movies. Despite that, I guess the industry and the demands of the marketplace can still throw you a curve ball sometimes. Right at the start of the nineties, the Norris siblings would work on a project
originally conceived for Charles Bronson, who had starred in increasingly grittier variations on his “Death Wish” movies all throughout the previous decade. Being roughly three hundred years old at the time, however, forced Bronson to pass the mantle over to another mustachioed tough guy. The resulting film, “
The Hitman,” would be “presented” by the barely-hanging-on Cannon, with no involvement from the company's previous execs. It represents an odd fusion of Norris' preferred style and the more intense violence that was becoming popular in the action genre at the time.
Cliff Carret is a Seattle police officer, investigating drug smuggling operations run by the local criminal empires. During one such bust, he is betrayed by his partner, Delany. Shot in the chest and pushed out a window, Cliff's heart stops momentarily in the emergency room. His police chief seizes this opportunity to have Carret declared dead. Under the new identity of Danny Grogan, a ruthless hitman, he goes undercover with the Luganni mafia family. The Lugannis are currently attempting to consolidate their empire with the LaCombe family across the border, against an in-coming intrusion into the area by Iranian criminals. Garret/Grogan, secretly in the employ of the police, attempts to complicate this fusion and dismantle both families. All the while, he continues to live a double life, helping out a bullied youth in his apartment building while still plotting revenge against his crooked partner.
Some ads promoted "The Hitman" with tagline “No more Mr. Nice Guy!” Unavoidably, the gimmick here is that Chuck is playing a “bad guy” or, at least, a violent anti-hero. Considering Norris had already portrayed a remorseless mass murderer in “Invasion USA” and “The Delta Force,” that really says a lot about the relative morality of eighties action movies. I guess it's okay when Commies and brown people are being slaughtered. The star sports a greasy looking mullet, a scar over his left eye, a black trench coat, and tough looking sawed-off shotgun. He has multiple scenes devoted entirely to intimidating people and is re-introduced into the story blasting an unarmed man across a room. This choice is reflected in the tonal atmosphere of “The Hitman.” This is a story of rival mafiosos, peppered generously with outrageous profanity. There's at least two scenes of extended torture, one involving pig guts being shoved into someone's mouth and face. Racism is a reoccurring theme, alongside betrayal, greed, and corruption. The film also features Chuck's character evidently going down on his female love interest, something that's definitely not happened in any of his previous roles. If that scandalized any of his more religious fans, don't worry, she's shot in the head in the next scene or so.
For a brief series of scenes, “The Hitman” seems like it's actually committed to the idea of Norris playing an irredeemable criminal. Perhaps whatever good was left in Cliff Carret died on that operating table, Grogan emerging as a Hydeian alter ego. That would've been interesting but “The Hitman” quickly gets cold feet. Upon returning back to his apartment, the “Grogan” persona is dropped entirely. He befriends a latch-key kid in his apartment, the boy's mom working three jobs just to support them. He enthusiastically shows the kid his model airplanes, as wholesome a hobby as a professional killer could have. When the lad reveals that he's being bullied, Grogan teaches him martial arts for self-defense. This leads to a light-hearted montage of the two training, set to a whimsical score. (There's also a scene where Grogan talks about growing up on an Indian Reservation as a white kid, getting bullied by darker skinned boys, which would probably be an insensitive thing to say to a black kid but this is apparently
a real anecdote from Norris' own childhood.) This subplot – alongside inexplicable moments like mulleted Chuck basking in the quiet majesty of a Beluga whale – removes any ambiguity from the premise. See, this guy might be a brutal killer of bad men but he's ultimately a good man, who fights for justice and protects kids. He, in fact, is a nice guy.
The tonal disconnect between these two parts of the film is amusing, as if a hyper-violent shoot-em-up is randomly interrupted by a B-plot from a moldier episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger.” That's exactly how Aaron Norris and cinematographer João Fernandes shoot these scenes too. Funny enough, the rest of “The Hitman” actually looks quite moody. Fernandes' talent for misty urban locations, blue head lights and street lamps piercing the shadows of corners and alleyways, get a good work-out here. That slaughterhouse torture scene definitely reminds you of Fernandes' horror roots. Setting the film in Seattle and Vancouver – cities whose criminal empires I was previously unfamiliar with – with so many scenes happening in dark warehouses inevitably make this feel like an episode of “
Highlander: The Series.”
Joel Derouin's musical score, which is heavy on the warbling saxophones and bouncy synth bops, repeatedly draw attention to how cheesy and cheap “The Hitman” is overall. It's another contrast in the film, some decent neo-noir visuals standing alongside TV melodrama and a soft jazz soundtrack.
If “Delta Force 2” suggested that Norris was becoming aware of Steven Seagal's style of limb-twisting action nudging into his territory, “The Hitman” makes me think that “
A Better Tomorrow” must have made its way to Texas by 1990. The scenes of Chuck duel wielding firearms while dodging around further bullets brings the Heroic Bloodshed style to mind. While the heroic part is debatable, the film definitely has plenty of bloodshed. The squibs here are very big and wet. Limbs are blown apart, blood splatters from every wound, and people are visibly agonized by their injuries. A notable moment has a grown man reduced to blubbering like a child after a gut shot, an unexpectedly realistic moment in an otherwise exaggerated action movie. Again, if not for so many other things about “The Hitman,” it would be a pretty gritty crime flick. The bad guy explodes into flailing bloody giblets in the final scene, which is presented as a moral victory.
The result is a bit of an odd ball. “The Hitman” seems designed to challenge Chuck Norris' established good guy act in many ways while also hilariously backtracking to cuddly, kid movie antics. All the actors playing the mobsters and crooks are giving suitably hard-boiled performances. Michael Parks is his usually colorful self as the film's main villain. The somewhat convoluted subplots concerning the mob world double-crosses point towards this possibly being a more serious crime movie. Then we'll leap back to the son/little brother figure that Chuck has to support or him rubbing a whale's head. Fascinating in its own way, it represents the direction the action genre was going in opposition to what Norris wanted to keep doing. He would pick the cheesy kids movie/TV stuff, mostly leaving the hard-hitting violence (and that awful mullet) behind.
[6/10][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
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