Back when I had watched THE EXPENDABLES 2 (2012), I acquired about a score of vintage Chuck Norris vehicles; I was familiar with only a few of them, and this was the first opportunity I have had to check one of the others out – albeit in tribute to Sir Christopher Lee.
The film is very typical action fare of its era – comparable, for instance, to the contemporaneous flicks Charles Bronson was starring in – but obviously incorporating Norris' brand of martial arts to complement the expected gunplay. The plot, too, is pretty routine: the star, along with his cop partner, gets ambushed (due to a snitch within the Police force) during a raid on some drug dealers – with the latter losing his life in gruesome fashion. Receiving no support from his superior (Richard Roundtree), he gives up his gun and badge – but, needless to say, continues the investigation on his own. This becomes even more personal when his partner's Asian TV reporter wife (engaged in her own expose' of drug trafficking) first contacts Norris that she may have acquired a lead on the villains and then winds up dead herself before she can divulge the information to the hero. Soon, however, he acquires a couple of associates: the dead woman's father (Mako), himself a martial arts expert and who often comments wryly on Norris' own skills; and her co-worker, who just happens to live in the same building, and who eventually goes to live with our protagonist and his dog after her own place is ransacked (at one point even comforting a perspiring Norris in the wake of a nightmare).
Lee plays the TV station head, but his mere casting gives away his identity as the head of the smugglers, while Matt Clark is the crooked cop who gets to die violently for his double face. The film, then, is not bad as these things go (aided by a rather good score) but there were a few instances of unintentional humour (Lee's chief goon is a club-footed giant – played by wrester "Professor" Toru Tanaka – so that his pursuit of the female journalist in a train station, which havoc apparently goes completely unnoticed by the authorities, emerges as awkward, to say the least), misjudged direction (when she calls Norris and is bluntly interrupted, the latter keeps asking her what is going on rather than precipitating to her rescue!; likewise, Roundtree keeps antagonizing Norris when their goals are clearly the same) and outright silliness (Lee, realizing that his operation is jeopardized, exclaims Norris's character name upon seeing him at his mansion, as if he had not been sufficiently set-up as his nemesis all through the picture).
The film is very typical action fare of its era – comparable, for instance, to the contemporaneous flicks Charles Bronson was starring in – but obviously incorporating Norris' brand of martial arts to complement the expected gunplay. The plot, too, is pretty routine: the star, along with his cop partner, gets ambushed (due to a snitch within the Police force) during a raid on some drug dealers – with the latter losing his life in gruesome fashion. Receiving no support from his superior (Richard Roundtree), he gives up his gun and badge – but, needless to say, continues the investigation on his own. This becomes even more personal when his partner's Asian TV reporter wife (engaged in her own expose' of drug trafficking) first contacts Norris that she may have acquired a lead on the villains and then winds up dead herself before she can divulge the information to the hero. Soon, however, he acquires a couple of associates: the dead woman's father (Mako), himself a martial arts expert and who often comments wryly on Norris' own skills; and her co-worker, who just happens to live in the same building, and who eventually goes to live with our protagonist and his dog after her own place is ransacked (at one point even comforting a perspiring Norris in the wake of a nightmare).
Lee plays the TV station head, but his mere casting gives away his identity as the head of the smugglers, while Matt Clark is the crooked cop who gets to die violently for his double face. The film, then, is not bad as these things go (aided by a rather good score) but there were a few instances of unintentional humour (Lee's chief goon is a club-footed giant – played by wrester "Professor" Toru Tanaka – so that his pursuit of the female journalist in a train station, which havoc apparently goes completely unnoticed by the authorities, emerges as awkward, to say the least), misjudged direction (when she calls Norris and is bluntly interrupted, the latter keeps asking her what is going on rather than precipitating to her rescue!; likewise, Roundtree keeps antagonizing Norris when their goals are clearly the same) and outright silliness (Lee, realizing that his operation is jeopardized, exclaims Norris's character name upon seeing him at his mansion, as if he had not been sufficiently set-up as his nemesis all through the picture).