Good Guys Aren't Jolie

I have lately trended away from watching my VHS tapes a little bit. Having just 29 remaining, a number of which are unwatchable due to playback problems (and having no plans to buy more until the rest- a lot of which are earmarked for movie night or are very long and not really exciting to me- are watched), I guess I don't feel a lot of urgency at the moment. They can be dispatched on a more leisurely schedule for a little while.

In the meantime, I've been watching stuff online (and I know that's a kind of a betrayal for me). Yesterday evening, I started off with intentions of watching "Tomb Raider". I can only say that after twenty or so minutes of watching Angelina Jolie mostly lounge around a palatial estate, I had enough, and that's when I turned to someone who may be a much worse actor but who I knew I could rely upon to deliver something watchable: Chuck Norris.

One of Chuck's vintage turns which I had not yet seen was "Good Guys Wear Black". In it, Chuck more or less plays out the premise of the later "Commando": The men from his elite team are being killed, and he must find out why. Regrettably, he does so with less charm and fewer thrills than Arnold does. Still it remains a tremendously watchable movie as I expected. Norris fails when it comes to passing as human, but the attempt always has me rapt.

Most Norris movies succeed on the basis of whether they are successfully able to mask the total liability that he represents. Some do this by leaving him out of a lot of the movie. Others surround him with hordes of better-acting character guys. In this one, they pretty well throw him out there to stand on his own. He doesn't do a fantastic job, but I was OK with it somehow. Maybe it was just because Good Guys Wear Black is any movie but Tomb Raider.