Famed Hollywood actor Chuck Norris, who passed away on Thursday at the ripe old age of 86, was best known as Cordell Walker, the hero of the popular TV series *Walker, Texas Ranger*, he was a martial arts cinema icon, and he was a flag-bearer of a brand of he-man cinema that often featured hundreds of punches, millions of bullets, and dozens of lines of dialogue. While they may have been made on a shoestring budget and featured the sort of jingoistic dialogue that would make an American eagle cringe, Chuck Norris had a way of making these films, which he starred in as a hero, into guilty pleasures.
And so, in memory of the hero of The Octagon, here are five of the best Chuck Norris films other than Walker, Texas Ranger.
The Way of the Dragon (1972)
Carlos Ray 'Chuck' Norris was already a veteran of the Air Force, a martial arts teacher, a middleweight karate champion, and the ‘Fighter of the Year’ in Black Belt magazine when he made his film debut in Bruce Lee’s pre-Enter the Dragon film. And it’s not an exaggeration to claim that the final showdown between the two in the Colosseum in Rome is one of the greatest fight scenes in the history of cinema.
Good Guys Wear Black (1978)
After the success of The Way of the Dragon made him a star, Norris landed his first leading man role in the exploitation film Breaker! Breaker! (1977), a truckersploitation film. It was Norris’s next film, however, that marked the beginning of the Chuck Norris: Martial Arts Film Icon phenomenon. Though Norris does not perform the famous flying kick into the windshield of a car in the film, it is the perfect film to display the star's skills in combat.
Silent Rage (1982)
Norris had already begun to branch out from purely martial arts films into crime thrillers that included some karate action as a bonus, or possibly an afterthought, in 1981's An Eye for an Eye. The film was a bit of a test run for Norris in the action genre, and the next one he made smoothed out some of the kinks and helped sell Norris as a hero of action in any genre. In this one, he plays a sheriff in a small Texas town and is accustomed to breaking up fights at a local biker bar.
Missing in Action (1984)
While Sylvester Stallone may have sealed the deal on the ultimate heroics of a POW. rescuing hero in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Norris got to this story first, and the result is Missing in Action, a tale of Colonel James Braddock, a POW of Nam, who escaped and returned 10 years later to rescue several of his countrymen still imprisoned in the camps. While Rambo became a defining blockbuster of the decade, Missing in Action remains one of Norris' most well-known and successful films and started a legitimate franchise for the former martial arts champ.
The Delta Force (1986)
After making one of the most jingoistic films ever made, the Grade-Z Red Dawn rip-off Invasion USA (1985), Norris returned with a men-on-a-mission thriller that allowed him to co-star with none other than Lee Marvin. The cast is a Mad Libs list of all-stars from the tail-end of the 20th century. But let there be no mistake: This is a Chuck Norris film. He plays Major Scott McCoy, second-in-command to Marvin's Colonel Nick Alexander, and they have to rescue hostages from a plane hijacked by terrorists.
Also Read: Chuck Norris, 'Walker, Texas Ranger' actor, dies at 86; family confirms in Instagram post
