A decent quality of acting but a lot of slow drama, a bit like an old Columbo episode.
Some good action scenes and some interesting plot developments but it’s still a slow if not stagnant movie for the most part unless you’re a fan of the slow drama genre. Aside from the occasional interesting bits, the plot is quite messy & unclear too – I guess this is in-keeping with the drama genre though.
Music and sound effects are often little more than poorly blended noise and screeching – sometimes they’re ok, but often they’re quite irritating in this movie.
There’s a lot of unintelligible whispering as Chuck’s character is thinking out loud with some kind of Ninja sensing ability – you may have to strain your ears and concentrate hard just to pick up most of what it’s saying.
The screen combat ranges from quite good to quite bad. Even Chuck Norris himself is doing a mix of convincing and unconvincing stuff. Bear in mind his background was mainly point-scoring type Karate (mainly Tang Soo Do, a type of Korean karate). He also did a bit of Judo. So he’s no Bruce Lee, but he’s better than the average non martial artist. His coordination is there enough to score more points than his opponent, but not to be untouchable or to deliver great force in a single shot. As such, his posture is often nonchalent and his grappling acting is very scruffy. He could easily be an amateur dancer rather than a martial arts superstar, the way he exhibits such poise without power. I guess point-scoring karate competitions probably are just as much like dancing as they are like fighting.
In summary, it wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but it was a bit of a chore seeing it through till the end. It’s mildly watchable and quite entertaining at times, but I’m certainly in no hurry to rewatch it – I probably never will.