“You’re nothing but a chickenshit weasel who thrives on the misery of others. And when death calls, you’ll be screaming like a baby.”
Chuck Norris delivers this incredibly badass line to bad guy Ramon Cota (Billy Drago) near the end of 1990’s “Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection.” His combination of great quips, big kicks, glistening muscles, huge guns and tight jeans made Norris, who died Thursday at 86, the all-American archetype of the muscled action star. While many of his contemporaries — Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme and Seagal — seemed larger than life with big accents and hulking frames, Norris felt commissioned by the military to prove what a good, strong man was.
This character was solidified by Norris’ indelible run of late-’70s and ’80s movies. After his big screen debut getting killed by Bruce Lee in 1972’s “The Way of the Dragon,” the 1978 film “Good Guys Wear Black” was Norris’ first starring action role. This led to a run of films where Norris would play some type of ex-military expert who has to take the law into his own hands, and cemented Norris as the in-house star for Cannon Films’ relatively low-budget, morally simplistic action films.
The structure was established early: An all-American loner has to gun down outsiders who threaten his way of life, or go to another country to make sure justice is done. In one, he’s a Texas Ranger taking down a drug dealer (1983’s “Lone Wolf McQuade,” which inspired Norris’ series “Walker, Texas Ranger”); in others, he’s an escaped POW who goes back to Vietnam to save more men (1984’s “Missing in Action,” which spawned two more sequels); a Chicago cop who engages with a gang civil war (1985’s “Code of Silence); and a special-ops agent who has to thwart a plane hijacking (1986’s “The Delta Force,” which also launched two more sequels).
In nearly every Norris movie, he’s muscling into a foreign land or othered community, kicking a bunch of ass, completing his mission and hitting the road — or neutralizing the new threat that came into his town. The pattern worked so well that it inspired a shift in other ’80s films: Can you imagine the jump from Stallone’s meditative 1982 film “First Blood” to 1985’s gun-fetishizing “Rambo: First Blood Part II” existing without the Norris blueprint?
Things shifted in 1993, when Norris took on the title role in the CBS drama series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” a modern Western about a lawman who always does what’s right, even if he doesn’t have a warrant or is quick to just kill the bad guys. And listen, no one wants to watch a procedural with a big focus on doing things the right way or having to pause the action to get paperwork approved by a local judge. But the black-and-white, right-and-wrong simplicity of “Walker” is cop-aganda nonetheless.
Norris’ Cordell Walker was never wrong and always had a strong moral to share along the way. Bad guys were only bad, good guys are only good, and that is that. But Norris was undeniable in the role, his great outfits and smile lighting up every room he steps in. The folksy wisdom and unhurried pacing is a warm blanket that comforted audiences all through the ’90s. But is a milquetoast, charming version of a lawmaker who lives by his own code even more insidious than a modern antihero?
Was Norris a brilliant athlete and top-shelf star? Yes. But there’s no denying that his roles were part of a body of work used to show American strength, might and the pernicious attraction of taking the law into one’s own hands — something that seems less fun in a year in which our country is funneling money into bombing Iran and ICE agents are acting like one-man militias. Given our nation’s divisions in morality, information literacy and overall sense of reality, it’s easier to see Norris’ characters as justification for a fringe conspiracy movement rather than a moral standing. When patriotism and laws shift away from the Constitution, what side does a gunslinger land on?
While Hollywood takes endless shots for being too liberal or left-leaning, it’s a short-sighted criticism considering the industry’s decades of glorifying American military strength. Ultimately, genre fans can appreciate Norris as a larger-than-life marquee figure. But it’s a unique twist on separating the art from the artist: When a star is the poster boy for American exceptionalism and might, at what point does his legacy transition from escapism to dangerous propaganda?
As a lifelong fan of Norris, it brings me no joy to consider this messaging of his work as a whole — it’d be a lot more fun to shut my brain off and enjoy these sturdy action classics. But it gives me hope for the future, where outrageous law enforcement and one-man militias are fantasy, only in a world seen on a VHS copy of 1985’s “Invasion U.S.A.” Then we can be thankful it’s just a movie.
Leave a Reply