Chuck Norris is one of cinema's best fighters who has a very distinctive and badass look. His beard is one of those traits. One of the more popular Chuck Norris jokes is "underneath Chuck Norris' beard, there's not chin just another fist." Whomever created that joke must not have seen any of his earlier films, because there are three different kinds of Chuck Norrises: smooth-faced, moustached and bearded. I mentioned this in two other Chuck Norris reviews for An Eye For An Eye (smooth-faced Norris' best) and Forced Vengeance (moustache-Norris' best). Now I am saying that The Hit-man is bearded-Norris' best. Eventually, I will do a review of The Delta Force: THE Best Chuck Norris flick. The Hit-man has a very unoriginal premise as a presumed dead cop (Norris) assumes a new identity and seeks vengeance against the bad guys. They try to make the story more complex and interesting, but winds up with utter confusion. In order to really get this, you have to be a huge action fan and/or a huge Chuck Norris fan. I am these, as well as a huge general movie fan, so I may have gone easy in seeing this. The acting isn't that great, the story is average and they fail at adding subplots with rival mob families and triads. Luckily, there is great action and has a great look that makes this a really fun watch.Just what makes this better than any other bearded-Norris film? Although the acting isn't that great, it is truly awesome when compared to a mega crappy Norris movie like Silent Rage. This was around the time that Norris was improving as an actor by growing from terrible to average. One of the subplots is he befriends a young Hispanic neighbour whose mother works several jobs. He is constantly chased by a Caucasian bully whom he always runs from. Norris teaches him self-defence, as well as facing his problems. He tells him a story of growing up near a Native reserve in Arizona and a big Native would constantly chase him until he was convinced to face him. He realizes it was the differences such as his hair being too light and skin being too pale that he didn't like. This is a true story that actually did happen to Norris. This is probably the best bit of acting that Chuck Norris ever did. It is also great words of wisdom that comes from his heart.Because we get to know the characters so well, it adds a lot to the story and makes the action sequences all that more exciting.

Originally envisioned as a vehicle for Charles Bronson this movie uses pretty much the same story you have seen in Kurosawa's "Yojimbo " , Sergio Leone's "Fistful of dollars" or Walter Hill's "Last man standing" - a guy wants two gangs to kill each other , so he tricks them in a war. The only original part of the screenplay is the pretty cute if not out of place subplot of Norris helping little kid to deal with bully. The story Chuck Norris' character tells about being harassed by a bully actually did happen to Norris while he was growing up.The cinematography is cool , the movie looks pretty atmospheric at night. Norris looks actually pretty badass with his beard , mullet and trench coat.Aaron Norris' somehow managed to competently direct for once. This is his best movie. It's not boring and it helped me to kill some time when I was bored. It's the stuff you can see late at night on cable-TV.If you like Norris you probably will like this movie . If you don't like him , it's unlikely that you will become a fan after this movie . I give it 2/10.

Hit-man, The (1991) ** (out of 4) Chuck Norris plays an cop who seeks vengeance for being double crossed by his former partner (Michael Parks) by going undercover in the mob and killing as many Mafia members as possible. He also strikes up a friendship with a young black boy but in the end it's all about revenge against Parks. I really didn't go into this movie expecting too much and I walked away from it getting very little outside of some rather funny moments. This is a poorly executed movie that makes very little sense but fans of "B" action movies might find enough entertainment here for a viewing. Being from Cannon you can expect the low budget to be made up for with cheap explosion and dumb action scenes, which is exactly what we get. I guess the producers didn't want Norris playing 100% bad so they wrote in the silly subplot dealing with the little black kid but this does lead to one of the funniest scenes in the film. The black boy is getting picked on by some racist kids so naturally Norris teaches him to fight. I don't find child abuse funny and any attempt to make it funny is just wrong in my opinion but after the black kid gets revenge, the redneck father takes it out on his son and the sight of this had tears running down my face. The entire sequence was so pathetic that I couldn't help but laugh and that includes what Norris does after the beating. As expected, the performances aren't anything overly special but Norris fits into his role nicely and manages to show off his smile quite a bit. In fact, the smile gets more showtime than some of his fighting skills. Parks makes for a fun villain but it's a shame the movie didn't us him more. The action scenes are all done on a small budget but this adds some campy charm as does the violent ending and the countless bad one-liners. In the end, I doubt too many will get any entertainment out of this thing but if you don't mind Cannon movies then you'll know what to expect.

The Hit-man (the annoying IMDb spell-check automatically corrects the correct spelling without the '-' to Hit-man) starts as Officer Cliff Garrett (Chuck Norris) & his partner Ronald 'Del' Delany (Michael Parks) are about to bust some drug smugglers when Del turns on Cliff & shoots him. Miracuously Cliff survives against all the odds, jump forward 3 Years Later in Seattle, Washington & after having recovered Cliff is angry. Having changed his name to Danny Grogan he manages to infiltrate the biggest drug dealer in Washington's gang as his hit-man, the guy this drug dealer named Marco Luganni (Al Waxman) turns to if he wants someone out of the way. Recently Andre Lacombe (Marcel Sabourin) the main drug dealer from Vancouver has started to move into Luganni's territory so he sends Grogan to deal with him, as the bullets fly & people start to get killed a gang of Iranian's lead by Grogan's ex-partner Del also joins the fun & Grogon senses his opportunity to bring down lots of bad guy's all at the same time...This American Canadian co-production was directed by Chuck's brother Aaron Norris & is quite frankly pretty poor stuff from start to finish. Although bearing the infamous Cannon Group logo The Hit-man was only distributed by them & had nothing to do with Golan or Globus despite the two Israeli producers often using Chuck Norris in their own films. The script by Galen Thompson is a really lifeless & dull affair about an undercover cop using two warring drug cartels against each other & then discovers the person who shot him is involved as well which leads to some personal revenge type motives. The Hit-man really is a very pedestrian & bland film, virtually nothing happens, there are a grand total of two fights (one in an Iranian bar & one at the very end), some utterly forgettable shoot outs where a few people are shot, one car gets blown up & another is crushed & that is it. There's far too much drama, personal angst & awful dialogue for The Hit-man to be enjoyable. There seems like huge sequences where literally next to nothing happens, seriously this is one of the most least action packed films I've seen recently. Then there's the embarrassing scenes with Chuck Norris trying to be kind & caring towards a young black kid (all the kid needs now is a bushy moustache), the scenes where he teaches the little kid karate are hilariously bad. I mean yeah, that's a great example to the kid isn't it? Fight violence with violence! The Hit-man is bad, very bad & it's not unintentionally funny enough to be entertaining either.Director Norris does alright & The Hit-man is competently made but it's so lifeless, bland & forgettable it's untrue. There is not one single memorable sequence in The Hit-man as far as I was concerned, I was throughly bored sitting there watching it. It's utterly predictable, there's not enough decent action & some of the sentimental drama stuff is really embarrassing as Chuck Norris actually tries to act (noooooooooooooooo!). We first Chuck in The Hit-man with a really bushy moustache but after he comes back from the dead he has a full beard & really long hair which just looks awful & very late 80's. He doesn't even get to beat many people up which is disappointing all by itself. The violence is tame although some scumbag drug dealing Iranian has both his legs blown off with by Chuck's shotgun. Nice, 'ave it!Technically the film is OK but functional at best, it's certainly not exciting & is so slow going it becomes a real chore to sit through. The acting is terrible, Norris can't & since there's not enough action for him to get stuck into it becomes very noticeable.The Hit-man is a really, really bland, dull & lifeless Chuck Norris action film with hardly any action in it. The film also seems to have a sentimental side as well which is just horrible & not fun to sit through. One of Chuck's worst & that's saying something, isn't it?