Whilst researching the previous article about the Missing In Action trilogy, it became apparent that I would need at least one more entry to fully explore my love of Chuck Norris B-Movies. Given how much my knowledge of film has expanded since 2002 (when I started studying film as opposed to merely watching), it would be easy to pass it off as just a silly phase. Reflecting on The Missing Action trilogy transported me back to a time when things felt a bit more together. A time when I wasn’t working, didn’t have responsibilities, basically, my childhood. It transported me back to my childhood and I was comforted to find that, despite knowing so much more about film now, I still thoroughly enjoyed watching the movies of my childhood hero.
There are three more Chuck Norris films that have stuck with me all these years. The Delta Force (1986), released by Cannon in the year I was born as though it was some kind of fate, and Norris’ two films with one of the eighties mini-major studios, Orion Pictures, Lone Wolf McQuade (1983), and Code of Silence (1985), films that share an interesting bond as they were both offered to Clint Eastwood before casting Norris.
I’d like to start by looking at The Delta Force. The Delta Force is one of my favourite films, it just narrowly missed out on a spot on my top 100 films of all time list (you can find the list on Letterboxd: https://boxd.it/nRJJE). Much like the Missing In Action trilogy, The Delta Force is a film tied up in rewriting history so that America can ‘get it right this time.’ Directed by Cannon's main man, Menahem Golan, himself, The Delta Force is loosely based on the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in June of 1985. The plane was hijacked shortly after take-off in Athens. The hijackers separated the passengers with Jewish-sounding names from the other passengers, killed a US soldier, and flew the plane between Algiers and Beirut over the following two weeks. The hijackers demanded the release of Israeli-held Shia Muslims. Then US President, Ronald Regan, intervened in the hostage negotiations and helped secure the release of the hostages in exchange for some of the hijackers’ demands. Menahem Golan was Israeli and was so moved by the hijacking and its outcome, that he began development on The Delta Force. A film where he would right the wrongs of the hijacking of TWA flight 847.
The plot of The Delta Force follows the hijacking of American Travelways flight 282. The plane is hijacked by Palestinian terrorist Abdul Rafai, played by Robert Forster, who is having a blast playing the villain (even if it is in brown-face). The US President, who we never see so that we can pretend it’s Regan, doesn’t play ball with the terrorists and authorises the Delta Force to go in and rescue the hostages. Led by Col. Nick Alexander, played by Lee Marvin, the team is assembled and they’re almost ready to go. They’re missing one vital element, Captain Scott McCoy, played by Chuck Norris. McCoy has lost faith in the powers that be because of a failed operation he was involved in, and now all he wants to do is raise horses on his ranch. But he sees the news reports about the hostage-taking, he tries to ignore them, but he can’t and soon he’s abandoning his ranch so he can return to the Delta Force. Because Chuck Norris is justice, he’s the truth, and he’s the American way. Norris will make sure those terrorist bastards will get what they deserve.
The rest of the plot follows the hostages as they’re moved between terrorist safe houses (the Jewish hostages are kept separate from other hostages, whilst the women and children are set free at the first stop) and the Delta Force members as they mount rescue attempts. The Delta Force is a well-written film, possibly the best-written film that Chuck Norris starred in. The script was strong enough to attract a raft of stars from '60s and '70s Hollywood including Robert Vaughn, Martin Balsam, and Shelley Winters. It also attracted character actor Robert Forster, who commits one hundred percent to his role. We even get an uncredited appearance from Liam Neeson. When watching the film, you can feel the passion Menahem Golan had for the subject matter and you can tell that he understood that he was still making an action film. The set pieces are thrilling, the chase through Beirut where Chuck Norris hangs from the door of a VW van to fend off the military chasing him and his colleague is one of my favourite chase sequences in a movie. The assault on the school building where the majority of the hostages are held is a well-constructed, fast-paced sequence, and most importantly, it covers the action in a way you can see what’s happening. Each action sequence is staged and set in a way that allows the American Delta Force to eradicate the terrorist threat and wreak havoc on the foreign militaries that support it. Film rewrites history.
No matter how good the cast of The Delta Force is, the real star of the show is the motorcycle that Chuck Norris and the other members of the Delta Force ride throughout the movie. These motorcycles are armed to the teeth with machine guns and missiles on the front, and even more missiles on the back. I think this film, along with Terminator 2 (1991) helped lock in my fascination with motorcycles (I don’t ride them, I just really love something about them). Norris uses the motorcycle as he and his colleagues chase down the last of the terrorists and rescue the Jewish hostages. Then, in the only real demonstration of karate in the film, Norris wreaks vengeance on Abdul Rafai by kicking ten bells out of shit out of him and then blowing him up with a missile from the motorcycle. It’s a fitting end in the eyes of Menahem Golan’s revisionist history, nothing but complete and utter obliteration of the enemy is enough. In one final, almost perfect set piece, Chuck Norris arrives at the airfield just in time to save the day one last time. Flight 282 is blocked from taking off by terrorists firing at them from Jeeps. There’s not enough runway for them to take off with the Jeeps in the way, and the gunmen might hit the fuel tanks. Fortunately for all on board, McCoy is once again late to the party (it’s a running joke throughout the film that McCoy is never on time). In what remains for me one of the greatest examples of action in a movie, Norris takes out the terrorists shooting at the plane, races the plane down the runway, pops a wheelie whilst standing on the seat, and catches a rope so he can climb into the plane just in the nick of time for the plane to escape.
It is action movie perfection for me. Everything works together to create a sense of thrill and excitement, especially Alan Silvestri’s score. The score for the movie ranks as one of my favourites, the blend of percussion and synths creates an almost symphonic score. It’s no wonder that Silvestri has gone on to score some of the most well-known films of all time, including Predator (1987) and Marvel’s Avengers series.
It’s very rare for a film to engage with me on such a level that I incorporate elements of it into my everyday life. The Delta Force is one of those films. There’s a quote that runs through the film, said by McCoy’s friend Pete, played by William Wallace, that has become a part of my everyday vernacular. Like Pete says to McCoy almost every time they part ways, I often part ways with my friends by saying ‘I’ll see you when I see you.’
The Delta Force got a sequel in The Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990), Norris is the only returning character, and, like Braddock: Missing in Action 3, he had a lot of say in the development of the script. By this point in his career, Norris was being directed almost exclusively by his brother, and his main supporters, Cannon Films, were on the way out financially. The Delta Force 2 feels like a Chuck Norris vehicle, with a very standard plot. It was Norris doing what he did best in a bid to keep his career afloat amidst the turmoil at Cannon Films, the shifting audience taste, and the new kids on the block, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Norris is quite well known for having little to no sense of humour when it comes to his acting career and so The Delta Force 2 feels like it lacks the fun of the first movie. There were no returning cast members from the first film and even the score has been replaced by a far more typical action movie score. The only people who look like they’re having fun are Billy Drago as the villain Ramon Cotta and John P. Ryan as General Taylor, who cracks out one-liners left right, and centre, almost as though he’s in an entirely different movie. A few good sequences, but none of the passion that you can find in The Delta Force.
This brings us away from Chuck Norris’ films with Cannon Films. He made more films under their banner, but they’re not essential viewing from his filmography. Instead, I want to turn to the two films Norris made with Orion Pictures. Starting with 1983’s Lone Wolf McQuade.
Originally written with Clint Eastwood in mind, Lone Wolf McQuade takes the spaghetti western aesthetic and transports it to 80s Texas. The shades of grey that inhabited the best of the spaghetti western genre, where the heroes and villains were all outlaws, are not here. Instead, there are very clear lines between the heroes (Texas Rangers) and the villains (gun runners and drug smugglers). Eastwood was a bonafide actor at this point, with a long string of hits under his belt. Whilst his presence would have likely elevated the film, he would be taking a significant step backward in terms of his career. That’s not to say that the film is bad, or that the script by B.J Nelson is unworthy of an actor of Eastwood’s calibre, but I understand why he would read the script and not see the appeal. This is especially relevant given that Eastwood was already Dirty Harry, the model for the lone-wolf police officer, and he was about to direct Sudden Impact (1983), the fourth Dirty Harry film. Director, Steve Carver, was not deterred by Eastwood turning down the role and felt that Chuck Norris (who he had worked with on An Eye For An Eye (1981)) was the perfect fit.
This set the scene for what, at the time, was to be one of the great martial arts showdowns in American cinema. Casting Kung Fu’s (1972 -1975) David Carradine in the role of villain Rawley Wilkes set up an end game between, arguably, the two most famous martial arts fighters in Hollywood at the time (even if David Carradine wasn’t a martial artist in the way Chuck Norris was). Carradine had a lot to say about the fight in the film, going on record to say that he and Norris wanted to have a fight that rivalled the coliseum fight in Way Of The Dragon (1972) (Drunk as Hell with David Carradine, Rainone, Tom). In the same interview, Carradine went on to say that the fight took four days to film, neither man held back, and by the end of it, they had both been broken down into little old men.
The plot of Lone Wolf McQuade is deceptively simple. There’s no revisionist history, no trying to right the wrongs of America, instead, it’s a straight-forward tale about how the hero needs to accept the help of others if he’s going to succeed. Throughout the runtime, McQuade comes up against obstacles that require him to seek help from those around him. The set pieces feel considerably smaller than those in Norris’ work for Canon Films, most likely because Canon focused on the thrill and the action at the expense of the story, whereas being a mini-major, Orion would have wanted to clear through-line for the character. Norris’ characters in the Missing In Action and Delta Force films never change, never grow. He is the same man at the end as he is at the beginning, the plot serves to justify the character’s actions and thus justify the flaws they seek to highlight in American foreign policy. Orion would demand more, there is no doubt in my mind that this is why Norris’ acting in his Orion pictures is head and shoulders above his Canon films. More was expected of him and, in many ways, he delivered.
The set pieces in the film all work cohesively to build towards the final confrontation. It’s clear from the beginning that this is neither a Norris nor a Carradine vehicle but a film designed to show both of them at their best. Carradine laps it up as Rawley Wilkes, growing ever more evil as the film progresses. At one point, he buries a battered McQuade alive in his truck and we watch as McQuade comes around, sips a beer, and uses the special setting on his truck’s engine to drive the car straight out of the grace. It’s redneck heaven, all he needs is a beer and his truck, and Chuck Norris can conquer anything. It’s worth noting that McQuade finds himself in this predicament because one of the DEA agents he’s working with jumps the gun and doesn’t work as part of the team.
The final fight is the event we came for and it highlights the true star of this movie, Francesco De Masi’s score. Known for his work in Italian exploitation films and spaghetti westerns, Francesco De Masi was hired specifically to give the film a spaghetti western tone and it’s a masterclass in how much effect the music can have on a final product. There’s very little about Lone Wolf McQuade that feels like a spaghetti western. Very few scenes take place out in the desert, the film instead chooses to set many of its set pieces in modern locations such as a factory, an airfield, and a race track. Then the score cuts through everything else, the whistles, the organ, and the choir, all combine to lift the music, and by extension the images, above what they are worth. It doesn’t matter that this is a modern film, when that score kicks in we’re transported to the wild-west.
Code of Silence was originally written in 1979 to be the fourth Dirty Harry film, but Warner Bros. passed on the script and it got shopped around Hollywood for almost a decade. At one point it even wound up in the hands of Cannon Films, who wanted to make it, however their financial difficulties got in the way and it was eventually picked up by Orion Pictures.
Code of Silence is not my favourite Chuck Norris film, but I would argue that it is objectively his best film. Code of Silence removes Chuck Norris entirely from the martial arts elements of his career and gives him a well-thought-out, three-dimensional character to play with. Being helmed by action genre maestro Andrew Davis (of Under Siege (1992) and The Fugitive (1993) fame) means that Chuck Norris is given a talented director to work with, who has clearly seen Norris’ previous work and worked out how to direct him. The film weaves multiple plots together involving warring Chicago gangs and police corruption, the title ‘Code of Silence’ refers to a stance within the police that officers shouldn’t snitch on other officers. The set pieces are relatively light, there’s a great chase sequence that winds up with Norris chasing Alex Stevens across the roof of a train. The final confrontation takes place in the villain’s (played by Henry Silva being Henry Silva) warehouse and involves Norris using an experimental police robot to take out most of the henchmen.
Objectively well made and put together, Code of Silence serves as a reminder of the actor Chuck Norris could have been had he not been entangled in the falling apart of Cannon Films. It no doubt didn’t help that after Firewalker (1986), where Norris horrendously miscast himself in an adventure, buddy-comedy, Norris opted to work almost exclusively with his brother Aaron directing. He was probably also feeling the sting from the failure of The Hero and The Terror (1988) a film where Norris made the conscious effort to put characterisation above action. It’s an enjoyable film overall and you can see Norris trying his best with the performance, he’s underserved by the script and the director. Some actors require what I call hard directing. They need a lot of time and a lot of discussion with the director before they get to set so that they know who the character is and how to play them instead of trying to work it out when the cameras are rolling. I imagine Chuck Norris is this kind of actor. The sting from The Hero and The Terror’s flop may have made him retreat into a more comfortable space, but sadly the times were changing. He did go on to have a very successful on TV in Walker, Texas Ranger (1993 - 2001), but by the time he tried to stage a comeback to movies, the world didn’t want Chuck Norris anymore.
Well, the world except me, maybe.
I don’t want to pursue it too much here, because it’s not the point of this entry of the substack, but I think there is a wider discussion to be had around cinephilia and taste. Does my continuing love of 80s Chuck Norris B-movies make me less of a cinephile? Does the fact that I’m still, at the ripe age of thirty-eight, discovering some of the films that others refer to as classics make me less of a cinephile? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but there are no doubt those out there who would argue that is the case. Even now, I continue to grow as both a fan of film and a filmmaker. I revisit films I encountered in my youth and disliked, only to find I have a greater appreciation of them now. However, the foundations that we build early on in any experience remain important to our future development. I’ve enjoyed exploring and revisiting the films that make up the base of my cinematic pyramid. Moving on from here the plan is to diversify the nature of the films I examine, however, an examination of the films that made me who I am was (in my view) important to understand the films I love.
I hope you enjoy the journey with me.
References:
Drunk As Hell With David Carradine - In Psychotronic Video, Spring 1990 (Rainone, Tom).