Chuck Norris, who died March 19 at 86, was an icon and a big movie star. Some younger people might not even know who Norris was. He was a legitimate martial arts champion before he got into movies and TV acting, unlike Steven Seagal, an actor who claimed to be a martial arts champion.
A lot of people liked Norris, but I regarded his movies as a guilty pleasure much of the time. Movies like “Invasion U.S.A.” and “Firewalker” fall into that category.
However, I really liked him in the action-thriller “Code of Silence” in 1985. Norris’ Eddie Cusack was a Chicago cop who got involved in a gang war. The movie was also memorable for its Windy City backdrops and settings and Henry Silva’s performance as a vile, despicable villain. Evil incarnate, if you will.
Much of Norris’s fame came from his popular TV series “Walker, Texas Ranger, from 1993 to 2001. I never watched the TV series, but I know he enjoyed popularity from that long-running series. In a rare movie appearance as an antagonist and villain role, Norris co-starred with martial arts star Bruce Lee in “The Way of the Dragon” in 1972.
“Lone Wolf McQuade,” a 1983 contemporary Western, was a precursor of sorts to “Walker, Texas Ranger” because Norris portrays a Texas Ranger taking on a drug lord portrayed by David Carradine, who later appeared in the “Kill Bill” movies.
Norris made a string of B-movie action thrillers for Cannon Films in the 1980s. T
he producers often started with a poster image, a title and a star, which were often Norris or Charles Bronson.
The Norris movies included the “Missing in Action” trilogy, “The Hitman” and “Hero and the Terror,” in which Norris took on a serial killer.
Norris joined the troupe of the Expendables with an appearance in “The Expendables 2” in 2012. He played Booker, who wanted to join the team but also enjoyed being a lone wolf. The all-star action franchise cast included Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
He also starred in “Sidekicks” in 1992, an action-fantasy featuring Jonathan Brandis as a boy who fantasized about being Norris’s sidekick.
Some of Norris’s memorable films include “Good Guys Wear Black” in 1978, “Forced Vengeance” in 1982 and “Silent Rage,” which was popular in 1982 because Norris fought an unstoppable serial killer portrayed by Toni Kalem.
Norris’s Dan Stevens dispatched him, though, through grievous bodily harm.
