Here, Chuck Norris plays Dan Stevens, a sheriff in a small town somewhere. I'm guessing judging by the accents it's either Texas, Arkansas, or Southern Indiana (Dear god the accents here kill me). What's disconcerning is how young Norris is here. This is a bit after his "Way of the Dragon"/"Breaker, Breaker" days but before he was known as the ass kicking machine he became known for later in his carrer.
The movie starts with the longest opening credit sequence ever with just a still shot of a stained glass window and all the cast and credits. I did a test later on. I let the credits run, I took a shower, made some breakfast, and helped take out the old broken fridge and when I came back, the directed by credit just flashed up.
With 20 minutes of the movie gone, we now focus on our bad guy, John Kirby. He's asleep in a dirty room and a bunch of kids are outside his door screaming. Soon Kirby wakes up and opens his door and some kid in a helmet he has a phone call. Then shot in real time, Kirby walks downstairs, ever so slowly, to the phone. On the other end is Tom (Ron Silver, yes THAT Ron Silver), his psyche-doctor. Kirby, having had enough with the screaming kids, the weird lady that lives with him, and apparently chickens in the back yard, tells Tom he's going crazy and hangs up the phone.
Still in real time, Kirby goes outside, grabs an ax, slowly walks inside where the weird lady spots him and runs from him, we get a homage to "The Shining", and then Kirby Axe Body Spray's the lady. Not even a minute later, here comes Stevens! Wow! He just KNOWS when there's trouble. Too bad he's late.
I have to say this movie had a horror movie feel to it at the beginning here, with Kirby. It made me forget I was in fact watching a Chuck Norris film and was a bit thrown off when he showed up.
Stevens finds Kirby and they fight for a minute, then the chase goes outside where Steven's overweight Deputy Charlie almost shoots Stevens. Finally, Stevens gets Kirby cuffed and taken into a car but Kirby isn't your typical bad guy. He has SUPER STRENGTH! He somehow BREAKS THE CUFFS and KICKS OPEN THE DOOR! Uh, isn't Chuck Norris suppose to be doing these things?
Cause of this, all the cops pump Kirby full of lead. But somehow he's still alive! Man, science didn't even get to him yet and he's already Superman. Speaking of, Tom, Phillip, and Paul, all scientists in the field of genetic engineering, are working on Kirby. After a 10 minute fight of Tom saying "NO! It's not moral to make him super human!" and Phillip saying "NO! We must test our formula!" and Paul just shrugging his shoulders and waiting to see who wins to take their side. When Tom leaves, Phillip goes "Mu ha ha ha ha!" and injects Kirby with some super secret formula that will make humans unable to die by any means.
Meanwhile we focus on Stevens for a bit as he hangs around a hospital shirtless for no good reason and he rekindles a romance with Alison, an ex-girlfriend. They never say why they broke up. Probably has something to do with winning karate championships.
We get a sex scene, which I never thought I'd see in a Chuck Norris film, but again this was an early one. Then Stevens has some jibber jabber with Charlie. They go to a diner where a biker gang is just leaving. One biker chick jokingly flirts with Charlie while the leader tries to intimadate Stevens, which is a bad idea, dude. Stevens tells the gang to get out. We'll check in later to see if they listen. (Spoiler: They don't.)
There's more scenes with Kirby's body being used for experimental purposes. I guess Kirby doesn't have any family what so ever. Or nobody cares since he's such a ruthless killer, all of two people (I didn't mention the first dude he killed cause it went by so fast).
You know, when I was watching this movie has a kid, I didn't remember all these slow scenes. I just remember the dude being unstoppable and Chuck Norris kicking his ass. When does this happen? So far it's been Norris shirtless, Alison's boobs, Ron Silver NOT acting like a bad guy, and Phillip putting weird chemicals in Kirby.
Things pick up a bit when we go back to the bikers story and Stevens find the gang being rowdy in a bar. This happens:
This only happens cause the next 25 minutes SLOWS DOWN pretty much to a grinding halt. Stevens and Alison are on again/off again. She misses his studlyness and decides to stay with him. Then we get a montage of all the ways Chuck Norris makes love. I dunno what has more sex scenes, this or "The Room".
Stevens and Alison decide to go away for the weekend. I forgot to mention two things:
1. Alison is Tom's sister.
2. Alison lives with Tom and his wife.
After Tom finds out what Phillip and Paul are doing with Kirby's body (I assure you it's not as disgusting as I just made it sound) he kinda gets into it (That just made it worse) but he thinks they went too far and now he feels all kinds of regret. Phillip more or less fires Tom and kicks him out of the lab.
Tom returns home and he's hungry! I know he's hungry cause he says he is about fifty times. His wife agrees to go out for pizza, which sets up Tom being alone for the next scene. Rather randomly, Kirby shows up. Yeah, he's very much alive. Huh. And he walks out of this super secure lab undetected. Double huh.
Anyway, Kirby shows up at Tom's and chases him around his house. Tom shoots him a bunch of times, forgetting that HE KNOWS Kirby can't get hurt. Unsurprisingly, Kirby kills Tom. Then Tom's wife returns and she gets killed by Kirby.
I'm desperately trying not to make a "Ron Silver: Today" joke here.Alison finally returns home (by the way, this all supposedly happened in an hour, cause when Alison left Stevens she said I'll be back in an hour) and gets ready for a weekend of Chuck Norris lovin'. She finally finds the bodies of Tom and his wife and freaks out. Stevens shows up in time to comfort Alison.
For whatever reason, Stevens takes Alison to the lab Phillip and Paul worked on Kirby, who by the way returns. They find him full of bullets and wonder if Kirby killed anyone. Nah, I'm sure someone just shot him cause it'd be fun. Granted, he could've wandered into gang territory wearing the wrong colors or something. But anyway, Paul doesn't wanna do this anymore and tries to kill Kirby with sulfuric acid, which totally doesn't work. Kirby kills Paul instead with it and then looks for Phillip. Phillip thinks he's Kirby's friend but is wrongly mistaken when Kirby hugs Phillip to death.
Charlie is suppose to watch Alison while Stevens leaves for no apparent reason when they hear screams. They both check it out and run into Kirby, who also hugs Charlie to death. But it takes awhile to work on Charlie. A lot to get through. Then of course, he starts chasing after Alison.
Stevens returns to the lab and hunts for Kirby and Alison. He finally finds her and he throws Kirby out a ten story window. Again, this ending felt like a horror movie. This is pretty close to the ending of "Halloween", if Donald Pleasance won awards for being a karate master.
Of course Kirby isn't dead and another chase ensues, this time in Stevens truck. Kirby hangs on by the bumper and I realize the scene with the T-1000 chasing after Sarah and John Connor in T2 ripped this scene off. Kirby manages to sneak inside the MOVING truck and Stevens tells Alison to "GET OUT OF THE HIGH SPEED MOVING VECHICLE NOW!!" which they do and survive. Hilariously, Kirby tries to drive the truck from the back seat, but it flips over and blows up (of course).
Again, Kirby's not dead. Stevens then proceeds to do several roundhouse kicks to him, before finally shoving him down a well. For some reason, they think this stopped Kirby. I mean, yeah if they dumped cement down the well and totally encased him. But they simply let him fall and walk away. If bullets, fire, and an ass kicking by Chuck Norris can't stop him, how is a well gonna?
Well, I'm totally right cause the ending shot is Kirby rising out from the water below. I guess this was suppose to make way for Silent Rage 2: Silenter Rage!
This movie is a bit low on the Chuck Norris action. It's the only reason the bikers plot was created. It would've been better if Kirby was just going around killing people and Norris was all like "DAMN YOU KIRBY!!!" and he roundhouse kicks a parking meter or something. Instead, Kirby doesn't fully return until well past the hour mark. In its place we get lovey dovey scenes with Norris and Alison. And Ron Silver not being a bad guy. Man, Ron Silver's more fun as a bad guy. We should watch Timecop sometime.
-Jason
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