Ranked: Chuck Norris – The Cannon Years
Last November in honor of what would have been his 100th Birthday, we Ranked the Cannon filmography of the legendary Charles Bronson.
Now today on the United States of America’s birthday, we will rank the Cannon filmography of a true American hero and the other cornerstone of Cannon… Chuck Norris!
Joining me for this endeavor are Bulletproof Action staff members Chad Cruise, Ryan Campbell, Chris DePetrillo and Matt Spector. Plus, three very special guests…
- Will Slater: We are always more than happy to collaborate with our friends at Exploding Helicopter and since Chuck Norris is in Exploding Helicopter’s Hall of Fame, it only made sense that we invited Will Slater from Exploding Helicopter to participate.
- Austin Trunick: The author of the Cannon Film Guide Volumes 1 and 2, Austin is a bonafide Cannon expert and we are thrilled to have him back for this edition of Ranked.
- Mike Leeder: Last but not least, action movie historian and our man on the inside of the industry, Big Mike Leeder. Mike’s passion for action movies is infectious and we are glad to have him sharing his thoughts and knowledge once again.
Now onto the countdown…
Chad Cruise: It may not be the greatest Norris/Cannon collaboration but I knew when I saw that text scroll and was immediately whisked away to the 12th century to see Richard the Lionheart fighting a demon from Hell that I was going to like it. Hellboound would eventually spell doom for Cannon and there may not be a better metaphorical dagger to the heart than to have a film titled “Hellbound” send you straight into bankruptcy.
Frank Shatter is a cop. A good cop. A good cop who won’t take no shit from any proto-Satan loser who has been holed up for a thousand years and has most likely never brushed his teeth. There are hearts ripped out, both in the film and from the chests of Cannon Group fans who would never see another film made by their beloved studio. Hellbound might not be the best from the boys at Cannon, but it sure as Hell….Bound isn’t the worst.
Matt Spector: If you take the elements of The Hitman on their own you would think you would have a top one or two Chuck Norris movie. Chuck Norris is Cliff Garret, a Seattle cop thought to have died in the line of duty but is brought back from the brink of death to go undercover as hitman for the Seattle mob to take them down from the inside. So far so good. Cliff Garret sports a mullet that would make JCVD drool. Two for two. In his spare time, Cliff Garret helps a young fatherless neighbor learn martial arts and do his part to end racism in Seattle. Ding and ding. Michael Parks is a top tier antagonist in any movie and the same can be said for The Hitman. Add those all together and you get… a middling to low-end late entry in the Cannon filmography. Chuck does look cool with that sawed off shotgun though.
Chris the Brain: While the action movie gods did not smile upon us and give us a Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) and Bobby Chavez (Steve James) reunion in Delta Force 2, some may forget Norris and James did have a chance to work together again on a Cannon film following 1986’s The Delta Force.
The Norris/James reunion took place in 1988’s Hero and the Terror with both Chuck Norris and Steve James playing cops hunting a monstrous serial killer played by Jack O’Halloran of Superman fame. Throw in the surprise of Billy Drago in a non-villainous role and Superfly himself, Ron O’Neal, as the mayor and there’s no denying Hero and the Terror had some action movie star power.
But few will argue that it is Chuck’s best work with Cannon (although I do know one guy who definitely would and he probably should have been the one writing this) and coming in at 8 on our countdown is proof of that.
Ryan Campbell: In 1986 Cannon films was determined to get in on the Indiana Jones hype. And in a case of Hedging their bets they released both Alan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold and Firewalker with our good friend Chuck Norris… who was also now looking for lost cities with lost gold.
Firewalker had some more star power as Chuck was joined by Louis Gossett Jr. The film is outrageous Cannon to the brim and their take could be described as Indy meets Romancing the Stone. The added twist being Chuck Norris’ track record of dispatching mercenaries in Central American jungles being well documented. With all due respect to Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas, none of them can throw a kick like Mr. Norris.
Firewalker may not be Chuck’s best work with the Cannon, but it is one of his more unique and in some ways breaks some of the conventions he had built up while leaning into others. Norris and Gossett have some good chemistry and this action adventure is a good time with a bowl of popcorn.
Chris DePetrillo: Braddock: Missing In Action III almost feels like the forgotten Chuck Norris film. Wedged in between Norris’ Cannon classics like Invasion USA and the original Missing In Action and his less-remembered films like Hero and the Terror, the final entry in the MIA trilogy is a nice slice of action that doesn’t slack on the bullets and body count.
We’ve got a one man army as our hero, shady CIA agents, sadistic military men, kidnapped kids…aside from missing a few ninjas, there’s plenty here to satisfy viewers’ needs for the expected Cannon insanity. Plus, this may be the first and only film in history that features a monastery existing on the second floor of a strip club. It’s always fun to see Norris kicking ass, and he does it here with gusto, taking down bad guys with his feet, fists, and firearms like a Real American Hero (G.I .Joe!). How can you not love a man who carries a gun that has a spring-loaded bayonet and a rocket launcher, and uses both attachments on one of the bad guys simultaneously?
Though his one-liners may be more memorable than any of the action sequences here (the famous “I don’t step on toes, Littlejohn. I step on necks.” quote comes from this film), Braddock: Missing In Action III remains a hidden gem from the tail end of Chuck’s action hero career, and a nice sendoff for the character of Col. James Braddock.
Austin Trunick: Admittedly, Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (or Operation Stranglehold, if you prefer) isn’t in my top tier of Chuck / Cannon joints, but it comes close. It took Cannon four years to produce this sequel, which was an eternity compared to the pace at which they usually pumped them out. As big as the first Delta Force was for the company, its follow-up went through several very different incarnations before it arrived at this one. For a while there was going to be a direct sequel with both Norris and Lee Marvin, helmed by Michael Winner—until Marvin’s health failed him. Then there was a version set to star Michael Dudikoff and Steve James, directed by Albert Pyun—which would have been exciting, to say the least. It wasn’t until Cannon was in desperate need of sure-fire sales at the end of the 1980s that they were able to convince Chuck to step back into his Scott McCoy role for a new Delta Force film.
Norris is flanked here by two of action cinema’s best character actors in John P. Ryan and Billy Drago. The former plays General Taylor, a good guy (for once), and essentially Norris’ sidekick—who’s mostly around to drop some of the movie’s best one-liners with his typical, wide-eyed enthusiasm. The latter, Drago, plays the film’s main villain: drug lord Ramon Cota, who wears one of cinema’s most nefarious ponytails. (We also have an appearance from Mark Margolis, who looks much the same as he did playing Hector “Tio” Salamanca on Breaking Bad roughly twenty years later.)
The plot doesn’t matter *that* much: the D.E.A. want to take out South America’s most dangerous cocaine trafficker, and Chuck Norris is the only one-man super-army who can do the job. With a similar combination of high-kicks and explosions to Invasion USA, the movie wastes very little time having Chuck do things besides kick ass – and we, as viewers, are grateful for that.
Chris the Brain: The first time I recall hearing the word prequel was during the build up to 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The second time I recall that term being thrown around was the following year when Cannon released Missing in Action 2: The Beginning… even if that wasn’t the initial plan. Some have talked about how horrible Chuck Norris looks in the movie, I wonder what they would look like being held captive as a prisoner of war for years in the jungles of Vietnam. Braddock and his fellow P.O.W.s were obviously emaciated and being treated like shit on the regular for years all to the delight of Soon-Tek Oh’s Colonel Yin, whose hardon for Braddock ended up being his undoing and all the nasty and sadistic shit he and his men did (the rat in a bag for instance) comes back to bite them in explosive fashion by the end.
Chad Cruise: If you ask someone to name one character played by Chuck Norris they will probably say “Walker, Texas Ranger”. If you tell them to name another they’ll most likely mention that he once fought Bruce Lee. What I’m trying to say is that most people are stupid idiots and it’s possible that they have missed the boat on one of the greatest action trilogies of all time.
Missing In Action just might feature the toughest POW S.O.B. this side of John Rambo but it’s also a very different film than any of the First Blood pictures (although, thanks for the script). Braddock doesn’t have any reservations about what he is doing and when he finally does start killing those dirty communist bastards, he doesn’t stop until they’re all graveyard dead. This movie made mega money for Cannon and turned Chuck Norris into a mega star one year after he made one of my favorites, Lone Wolf McQuade. Chuck Norris as unstoppable American vengeance fits like a pair of old slippers and it’s no surprise that Missing In Action became one of Cannon’s biggest successes.
Will Slater: After defeating the Vietcong (Missing In Action 1 & 2), and single-handedly thwarting a Communist insurgency (Invasion USA), it was only a matter of time before America’s most hirsute action hero would find himself pitted against that other great boogeyman of 80s cinema: Arab terrorists.
After a group of swarthy, Middle Eastern stereotypes hijack an airplane full of American disaster movie clichés (pregnant lady, nuns, stoic pensioner, etc), it falls to the titular Delta Force led by Chuck Norris to kick, in the unfortunate parlance of the times, rag-head butt and rescue the unfortunate airline passengers. Hooah!
The resulting film is a wet dream of Reagan-era jingoism and the apogee of Chuck Norris’ 80s action exploits. With the main plot points taken from the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847 and the disastrous real-life hostage rescue Operation Eagle Claw (a thinly veiled version of which opens the film), The Delta Force is perhaps best seen as a kind of exorcism of the American psyche. “Do we get to win this time?” asked Sylvester Stallone’s war traumatized vet in Rambo: First Blood Part II. And, as in that film, the answer is most definitely, yes.
Inevitably, the hostages are rescued, but only after Chuckie gets to screech round the streets of Lebanon on a rocket-firing motorcycle racking up a truly prodigious body count. And fittingly, for a film filled with tub-thumping patriotism, The Delta Force ends with the liberated hostages swigging Budweiser and singing the star-spangled banner. America! Fuck yeah! A product both of its time, and for its time, The Delta Force is a crass, simplistic, and, very frequently, absurd movie. Nevertheless, it is those very qualities, combined with an unabashed exuberance, which make this a bona fide action classic. And the quintessential Chuck Norris film.
Mike Leeder: Chuck Norris in a movie by Cannon Films, hell yes! And a Chuck Norris movie directed by Joseph Zito where Chuck gets to save middle America from Russian terrorists invading their shopping malls? At Christmas???
That’s it I’m calling shotgun, or should I say double Uzis and whispering Rostov till the lights go down and the movie comes on, and probably a bit longer until someone asks me to shut up!
Now Chuck did some great movies during his tenure at Cannon, we got the Missing in Action trilogy, we got Delta Force 1 & 2, we got Hellbound, the Hitman, and Firewalker but for me the best example of Chuck at Cannon Films is Invasion USA. My love for Chuck Norris movies began with a VHS triple bill of the American Cinema trilogy Good Guys Weat Black, A Force of One and The Octagon, and his subsequent movies had their ups and downs, i have a lot of love for Forced Vengeance, Silent Rage and of course Lone Wolf McQuade, it wasn’t until he signed with Cannon Films and Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus that we really got to see Chuck at his very best!
Now Invasion USA was Chuck’s second collaboration with Director Joseph Zito (Missing in Action, Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter), and saw Chuck and his brother Aaron (his longtime double and stunt coordinator) contributing to the story with scriptwriter James Bruner to give us a movie born out of the Red Scare era of the 80s and Reagans Presidency, the same era that spawned Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Red Dawn and more.
When a Russian lead force of Russian/Cuban and assorted mercenaries bring terror to American households through a series of disturbing and violent terrorist acts, only one man can see the darkness and hear the silence, yep Chuck Norris as former CIA Operative Matt Hunter, dressed in a fetching Denim ensemble and wielding two Uzi’s will punch, kick, shoot and blow the living shit out of anyone making mischief in middle America!
Director Joseph Zito gets the most out a rumoured 12 million budget, with plenty of guns, explosions, and stunts as the bad guys wreak havoc, that blow up an entire suburb at one point (ok the area was being demolished to make way for an expansion of Atlanta Intl Airport but it looks impressive and expensive, and shocking as the bad guys fire rocket launchers at Christmas Trees and houses decked with Christmas lighting! The bad guys try to blow up a school bus full of innocent children, they cause chaos at a shopping mall filled with Xmas shoppers that leads into a high octane car chase, and an epic finale which sees the bad guys taking over sections of downtown Atlanta and the National Guard sending tanks and troops into the streets to battle the bad guys. Meanwhile inside the Atlanta equivalent of Nakatomi Tower, Chuck is hunting bad guys in a way that John McLaine could only dream of culminating in Rostov and Hunter facing off with machine guns and rocket launchers! All together now: (whispered) Rostov! (Shouted) HUNTER!!!!!!!
The stunt department lead by Norris and BJ Davis got their most out of their team with stuntmen being beaten up, shot, falling, flipped, set ablaze, crashing cars and blown up aplenty, most notably stuntman Matt Maxwell who is literally blown into the camera with full force in one sequence! You know which one I’m talking about!” that man earned his pay and a hopefully hefty stunt adjustment that day! The only area of action I felt was a bit lacking, was we didn’t really get to see Chuck pulling off much real martial artistry, would have been nice to see Chuck throw a few more punches and kicks, bit he does rock the denim ensemble with the twin uzis better than most people!
Brazilian cinematographer Joao Fernandez who previously shot Missing in Action and Friday the 13th Part 4 for Joseph Zito, does a great job and would continue to work with Chuck on various projects including Walker: Texas Ranger, Sons of Thunder, Delta Force 2, The Hitman and Sidekicks, giving the film a scale and visual feel worthy of a much bigger movie.
Composer Jay Chattaway had previously worked with Norris & Zito on Missing in Action, and his subsequent credits would include Red Scorpion, Maniac Cop 1 & 2, and various incarnations of the Star Trek franchise delivers a suitably 80s cool soundtrack.
We’ve got a solid supporting cast that includes the then soon to be Untouchables bad guy Billy Drago, Big Trouble in Little China’s James Pax, and of course Whoopi Goldberg as a feisty reporter who uncovers the biggest story of her life, well we could have had Whoopi but for some reason we ended up with former Miss U.S.A. Melissa Prophet as an annoying Lois Lane wanna-be who constantly calls Chuck “Cowboy” and at one point somehow manages to throw a manhole cover at him!
The villain of the piece is the late great Richard Lynch, veteran of everything from Albert Pyun’s The Sword & the Sorceror, The Ninth Configuration, Bad Dreams, Little Nikita and pretty much every TV show including TJ Hooker, Airwolf, The A-Team and more, as a very interesting villain. Yes, he’s a maniacal bad guy who wants to overthrow and destroy the All-American Dream, but then you realize he’s a man haunted by demons, one demon in particular as he has recurring nightmares of his nemesis Matt Hunter kicking him in the head, you almost feel sorry for him in spite of all the violence he carries out, and you know he’s gonna get his comeuppance from Chuck in the finale!
And of course we have Carlos Ray aka Chuck Norris in what I really do think is one of his finest hour’s and a half as the fuzzy chested, denim loving Matt Hunter, he’s like an 80s John Wick who’s turned his back on the action and is living the quiet life in the Everglades, but when the Russian’s blow up his house, machine gun his friend and no doubt kill his pet Alligator Ronny, he’s forced to walk the road of vengeance and kick some serious ass!
Now the film did some pretty good business Stateside and around the world at the Cinema, (I saw it on limited release on the big screen in London) and even better business on video, in fact it in spite of MGM’s later issues with Cannon Films, it was for a long time MGM’s 2nd highest selling VHS behind a little movie named Gone with the Wind, frankly my dear we don’t give a chuck!
In fact the film did so well, that a sequel was announced Night Hunter which would have seen Chuck reprising the role, but Norris declined and just as happened with American Ninja, the role was inherited by Cannon’s other contract action hero at the time, Michael Dudikoff who got to play a younger alternate version of Matt Hunter opposite the late Steve James who worked with Chuck on Delta Force and the Hero & the Terror, in Sam Firstenberg’s slick Avenging Force as it was called by the time it hit the screen. And while Dudikoff did a hell of a job, and i think Avenging Force is my favourite movie of his, i would have loved to see Chuck taking on the Pentangle!
I got to see Invasion USA on the big screen in London back in the day, when Cannon had its own cinema circuit in the UK, and then it hit video courtesy of MGM where it became a regular rental and eventually i picked up the ex-rental when the video shop wanted to clear out some older titles. And upon arrival in Hong Kong i soon picked up the HK Laserdisc which has an insane Anime style cover!
And any film that has a sequence with Chuck lying on a bed drinking beer watching Earth vs. The Flying Saucers while the FBI and the National Guard make plans to arrest him, gets extra bonus points. Its the kind of movie that the 80’s almost encouraged the making of, its a great double bill with Red Dawn or even a triple bill if you throw in Renny Harlin’s Arctic Heat/Born American which stars Mike Norris, son of Chuck and his friends falling foul of the Russian’s while on holiday….
And lest we forget Invasion USA is also a Christmas movie, with the terrorists targeting twinkling Xmas trees and malls full of shoppers in the holiday spirit, so it can hold a worthy place alongside Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Dark Angel as a high octane high impact high spirited highly entertaining slice of classic Cannon & Chuck goodness, so turn down the lights, turn up the speakers, hit play and on the count of three….(whispers) ROSTOV!!!!!
