Chucked

Chuck Norris. The name says action… although I’ve yet to figure out why. Let’s face it; Chuckles is about as lively as a glacier and has fewer facial expressions than Mt. Rushmore. And in 1985’s ‘Code of Silence’ he doesn’t even seem to do much fighting, which I would have thought was the whole point. It’s not like we watch Chuck Norris movies for the zesty dialogue and innovative camera angles. Twenty minutes randomly selected from a Jackie Chan movie will yield at least one lengthy, beautifully choreographed fight scene. Twenty minutes randomly selected from ‘Code of Silence’ will yield a lot of stony glowering and high-waisted jeans, and that’s about it.


Still, the good thing about Chuck Norris is that he was at the height of his powers in the mid-1980s, and there’s a certain sense of comfort to be gained from taking out your list of Mid-80s Cultural Signifiers and time-stamping the relevant items as they appear.


First piece of supposedly soulful saxophone music – 0.02

First appearance of a freakish man-mullet – 4.06

First appearance of a Rubik’s Cube – 7.27

First appearance of jeans worn a little too short, so as to display blindingly white tube socks – 12.52

First appearance of a room full of women with explosive perms – 17.35

First appearance of Henry Silva playing the same character he always plays: a rich evil white dude in a suit – 22.02

First appearance of a fanciful robot, a la ‘Short Circuit’, that isn’t possible with today’s technology, let alone 1985’s – 25.32

First appearance of awful, candy-coloured 80s art – 35.13

First appearance of a woman with a girl-mullet and earrings the size of New Jersey – 36.10

First appearance of a cutting-edge personal computer with less processing power than a Tickle Me Elmo – 38.56

First time Chuck Norris actually fights somebody, possibly in reaction to the audience’s cries of “Sweet merciful crap, Chuckles! We’ve been watching for three quarters of an hour! Punch someone in the head already!” – 46.01


So how does it end? It ends the way these movies always end; with the hero bloodied but triumphant, as the camera pulls back to reveal the setting in which he just fought his final battle, now crawling with cops and paramedics who appear despite the fact that no one had a phone with which to call them.