Review: Code of Silence

1985
Directed by: Andrew Davis
Category: Badass Cinema

Eddie Cusack's a good cop having a very bad day

While not as awesome as Chuck Norris's other 1985 feature Invasion USA, or director Andrew Davis's next film Above the Law with Steven Seagal, Code of Silence is entertaining on a gritty cop drama level and not on the all out 80's action film level, sadly. But it's still good and has it's moments as well as Norris being a total badass and not giving a shit about what anybody thinks. One of my biggest complaints though would have to be that with the exception of a scene where he's in a gym training or one scene in a bar when he begins to kick the ass of everyone inside, he really doesn't get a chance to show off any of his martial arts skills, which is odd since they make it a point to let the viewer know that he does possess these skills, yet for some reason felt the need to not include them in any part of the film, and a Chuck Norris film to boot. But he does get to talk a lot of shit, throw around a lot of attitude and deliver some really great one-liners.

Eddie Cusack (Chuck Norris) is an honest Chicago cop with a reputation for being a hard ass, no matter the consequences. A major drug bust spearheaded by Cusack goes awry after a gang of robbers headed by Tony Luna infiltrates the operation and kills taking there money and drugs. Only the head drug dealer didn't die and now his brother, played by the awesome Henry Silva, wants revenge and will stop at nothing to get it. Meanwhile, during this drug bust gone bad one of Cusack's men accidentally kills a kid who just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, mistaking him for one of the drug dealers. He plants a gun on the dead kid to make the killing look justified and thus the dirty cops young partner is thrust into a "Code of Silence", which divides the cops of the precinct who honor that code against the young partner and his Sargent (Norris), who knows the dirty cop is up to no good. 

I love me some good Chuck Norris, and after being somewhat let down by the missed opportunity that ultimately became Silent Rage, I felt I needed to seek out some other 80's Norris flicks to quench my love for the guy. Unlike a lot of Norris's other films around this time, Code of Silence plays it straight, never really straying to the outlandish like say, Invasion USA or Lonewolf McQuade, which really isn't a bad thing if you know that's the kind of film you're getting into. But if you're expecting a lot of action, then this one might leave you a little disappointed because it plays out more like a cop drama than anything with Norris showing a little more depth and emotion than usual. What saves the film is that it's really well structured and if you can look past the fact that there's not much action or Norris doing some martial arts then you can appreciate how well it's made.

Along for the ride is the great Henry Silva as the main bad guy Luis Comacho, much like he was in Davis's feature after this, Above the Law. And much like in that film, he's severely underused here. It's so frustrating too because he's so good at being the bad guy in films like Sharky's Machine, yet he only shows up for a minute at a time here and there and it's not until the very end where he's finally given some extended sequences, yet it still doesn't seem like enough. It would have been cool if it was more of a cat and mouse game between Norris and Silva, but the film slows down way too often to address the whole subplot involving the dirty cop who planted the gun on the dead kid and how his partner can't seem to cope with the fact that he knows this and has a hard time living with it and the whole "code of silence" thing. You also have Dennis Farina as Cusack's partner and a nice selection of recognizable character actors. Overall, the cast is pretty great.

One of the things I liked most about this is it's gritty realism, circa mid 80's Chicago. Much like he did in Above the Law a few years later, Andrew Davis seems to have a knack for giving the city a life of it's own, though one of my minor gripes would be he sways a little too much towards the hand held shots, but overall the film looks good. Though the use of reverse shots for several sequences was really odd and painfully noticeable. Like a scene where Cusack is in a car and reverses really fast and then does a 180 so that he can drive forward. Or a scene in the big showdown in the warehouse at the end where they use one shot, and then the same exact shot reversed a few minutes later. Weird.

Martin over at the excellent review site A Hero Never Dies recently did his own Code of Silence review about a month ago, which you can find here, where we pretty much feel the same about this one. It's well made, with Norris demonstrating a little more depth, but won't win over any new fans if you're not already a Chuck Norris fan. Ultimately, there's just not enough action or Henry Silva. 

Expendables 2 Teaser Trailer is up!

Not much of a trailer as it is more of a confirmation of who's actually in it this time around. 

First thing extremely noticeable is that the camera actually stays still, as opposed to Stallone's overly used shaky cam method in the first one. The action fan in me is still pretty excited about this one though. 

Review: Silent Rage

1982
Directed by: Michael Miller
Category: Badass Cinema

I must confess, this one left me a little underwhelmed. Not to say that all the ingredients weren't there, but I think it was in the execution by director Michael Miller where this thing really falls short.

I've had this in my DVD collection for years now, always meaning to pop it in and give it a spin, but always forgetting that I have it. I know I've seen this before, but it was literally some 20 odd years ago at least so my memory of anything related to this film are virtually nonexistent. But it sounds cool. Chuck Norris as a Texas sheriff hunting down an unstoppable killer with his trusty and goofy sidekick circa 1982? Sounds like a winner to me!

I'm not going to bother with a synopsis this time out because I just basically gave you the jist of the story. I mean, I couldn't really elaborate on that in synopsis form since annoyingly not much is really explained in the film. Stuff just happens and you just have to accept it. Instead I'll go more for a play by play on what works and what doesn't and hope it doesn't come out too long.

Silent Rage works on some levels, but then fails miserably on most of them. What you should know first before going in is that this is "not" an action film, rather it's more of a thriller with hints of a slasher film here and there. And it's when the film is hitting on these slasher film themes that it really kinda tanks. Firstly because whenever the killer is going around killing people, director Michael Miller converts to full blown hand held POV camera work a la Halloween. Fitting since Halloween II had just come out the year before. I don't know, to me it was a lame copout technique and completely shifts the tone of the film from a Chuck Norris film to a slasher film wannabe. I mean, the killer is even wearing a jumpsuit! The only thing that's missing is a mask. It only makes it painfully clear this guy has no business directing big budget features.
When the story is not focused on the killer and using the POV camera work, then it resembles a pretty standard and straight forward thriller, only this time it's got the man, the myth, the legend..... Chuck Norris.

The film starts with John Kirby (Brian Libby) having sort of a meltdown in his rented room in a house full of screaming kids and an equally loud mother. He receives a phone call and he tells the person on the other end of the line that he's "losing" it and doesn't know how much more he can take. Right away you get he has mental problems and he's probably talking to his psychiatrist because he looks like he's about to flip out, sweating profusely and trying to take some pills that he proceeds to drop on the floor. In a split second.............he snaps. He walks to the back yard and picks up an ax and kills the mother of the house for no reason. The mailman, seeing the woman scream for her life through a window, calls the cops and enter Texas sheriff Dan Stevens (Norris) and his clumsy partner Charlie (Stephen Furst). Long story short, John is killed with a barrage of shotgun blasts after a struggle with police "after" Stevens had already subdued him and put him in the back of a squad car. So it's here we are shown that this guy somehow possesses some kind of superhuman strength. So that's a pretty promising start. Not spectacular or anything, if only it had been filmed better. Director Miller uses long tracking shots with a hand held camera that offers nothing other than the conclusion that the guy doesn't know what the hell he's doing. Bad camera angles, bad choreography and bad steadicam work leaves a lot to be desired and sort of blows such a powerful opening from a film.

Thankfully, when the rest of the film isn't focused on the killer, it actually looks a little better - no bullshit and lazy steadicam work. Unfortunately this is also what hurts Silent Rage because a good half of the film is not even focused on the killer or who he was or how he became the "silent rage", but instead on Sheriff Stevens trying to woo his old girlfriend back, who also happens to be the sister of the killer's former psychiatrist (Ron Silver), who in turn also happens to work with a mad scientist named Dr. Spires (Steven Keats) who has invented a new rejuvenating drug that can rapidly heal the body of any type of injury in a matter of minutes (It's really not as complicated as I make it out to be). Only problem is that it's never been tested on a human. And that's where John Kirby comes in. Since he was able to somehow display this remarkable strength by taking all these shotgun blasts to the body and still keep going, Dr. Spires think he's the perfect candidate for the drug since he's dead anyway, much to Dr. Halman's (Ron Silver) objections. What could it hurt? Little do they know that while the drug does in fact help the body to rapidly heal physically, it also turns your brain to mush and for some reason into an unstoppable killing machine. Why? I don't know. They never explain why of all things a person would turn to murder and why he specifically targets certain people before ultimately just killing everyone in site.
Silent Rage plays heavily on the Frankenstein theme, for better or worse and they never explain anything, other than they gave a dead crazy guy drugs that brought him back to life and just made him even more crazy.

The good? The cast is really the only thing Silent Rage has going for it. Ron Silver was a treat to watch playing a moody, yet morally competent psychiatrist/doctor who knows right from wrong and wanted nothing to do with the experiment. Stephen Furst was kind of an odd choice as Norris's partner, but he does add a few chuckles to the story. Toni Kalem as Norris's impossibly cute ex and sister to Dr. Halman stands her own with the big guys. Chuck Norris is Chuck Norris. A complete badass. Need I say more? He's so cool and collected the entire time, even when he's walking into a crime scene with the crazy guy still inside and not knowing what the hell he's up against. Or when he's trying to woo his ex with long and pointless sequences of make-out sessions with her. There is a scene though, when the killer has just killed his partner, and he slowly stands up after having been on the floor with his faithful partner Charlie before he died. He. Looks. Pissed. Classic!

I think it's funny that they have a shot of Norris on all the different movie posters of him doing a kick when there's virtually no martial arts action going on in the entire film. I counted 2 scenes in the whole film where he uses a "little", but that's it. A big fight scene in a bar where he single-handedly takes out an entire bar full of biker thugs and the big fight with the killer at the end. What's even funnier is that on any of the trailers and tv spots, they mostly use footage of both the bar fight and the final fight with the killer; the two scenes where there is actual fighting and they hardly use any footage of anything else from the film. The bar fight was kinda cool, but the big fight at the end was ............ lame. It's mostly just a lot of wrestling and tumbling with the guy, with "no" music and really badly filmed where they litreally use the same closeup shots of Norris and the killer over and over and over again intercut between there tumbling bouts.

This is not your standard Chuck Norris stuff, especially considering this came out smack in the middle of a pretty solid point in his career with films like The Octagon, An Eye For An Eye, Forced Vengeance, Lone Wolf Mcuade and Missing in Action. He was trying something different, and it woulda worked if Silent Rage had a better and more qualified director. Feature films is not this guy's forte; no doubt since all he's ever done since this is television work. Give it a shot if you dare. You've been forewarned.