My Cultural Diet

What can I say… I have a fondness for classic Chuck Norris movies. Code of Silence is basically Norris’s attempt at a gritty crime thriller à la the Dirty Harry films. (In fact, the film was originally pitched as the fourth Dirty Harry film.) As such, it features far less martial arts than your typical Norris movie, but don’t worry, he still gets in a few roundhouse kicks as a Chicago cop caught up in a war between rival Colombian and Italian gangs. Which would be bad enough, except he’s also shunned by his fellow officers when he refuses to support a crooked cop. Kudos to Norris for doing his best to be a Serious Actor here. As a result, Code of Silence is arguably the most critically acclaimed of his films. But watching it now, 40 years later, it all seems a bit quaint. That, combined with the juggling of multiple storylines (I wish the “corrupt cop” storyline had been the film’s focus) as well as some wasted performances from Henry Silva (as the Colombian gang leader) and Dennis Farina (as Norris’s joke-y partner), means that Code of Silence ends up being a bit underwhelming. And don’t even get me started on the armored police robot.

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