One of many Chuck Norris starring vehicles directed by his brother, Aaron, The Hitman finds the Total Gym spokesman sporting a haircut that would make Billy Ray Cyrus weep with joy and plenty of black clothes as he takes on the underworld in Seattle.

Cliff Garrett (El Chuck!) is a good cop who just wants to do his job. He's partnered with Ronald Delany (Michael Parks), who is on the take. When things go bad, Delany leaves him for dead and runs off into the night with his drug dealing cohorts but as anyone can tell you, Chuck Norris doesn't go down for the count that easily – at least not in the first ten minutes of the movie. At any rate, Garrett isn't dead and in fact, he's once he's recovered from his injuries we find that he's actually pretty pissed off and now he wants his revenge. How does he do this? Why, he goes undercover as a hitman for the mafia named Danny Grogan. At first the crooks are a little wary but he soon proves his worth to them by taking on some jobs that don't fail to impress. You see, in Seattle the Italian mob is at war with the French Canadian mob who are at war with the Iranian mob who are in turn at war with the Italian mob, or something like that – so there's no shortage at all of people for Chuck to kill and hurl witty insults and one liners at. Once he's wormed his way into their inner circle, however, it's time for vengeance – sawed off shotgun style!

Those expecting the wholesome and hokey world of Walker: Texas Ranger will likely be a little taken aback by The Hitman. Chuck Norris is actually a bit of a bastard in this one, blowing off people's knee caps and spitting in people's food. He makes it with a mob bosses gal pal and even throws out a racial insult or two. This is not the friendly ranger behind you while you roam around in Texas, this is an angry man who isn't afraid to get his hands a little dirty on his quest for cold and bloody revenge. He still can't act – but who cares, the mullet and the shotgun more than make up for that tiny detail.

Chuck works with some interesting people on this one. It was co-written and produced by Don Carmody, the same man who brought Snake Eater II from wonderful dream to blissful reality. Michael Parks, who has shown up in everything from Kill Bill to Death Wish V to Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare Beach is in here. Also keep your eyes open for the late Al Waxman of Cagney And Lacey as one of the mafia types, as well as world renowned Canadian talent Bruno Gerussi of The Beachcombers as another one of the bad guys. Anyone who has seen The Beachcombers and knows the vast importance of the long running Canadian series will realize how important his presence is to this film.

In the end, The Hitman really offers nothing original or unique – it's pretty much a by the numbers affair – but it is a fast paced and violent action film filled with gun fights, car chases and even some kung fu here and there. Chuck Norris fans, and I consider myself one of you, can you really ask for much more?

The DVD

Video:

The Hitman gets a 1.33.1 fullframe transfer – I have no idea if this is the proper aspect ratio for the film or not (there is a warning at the beginning of the movie stating that the film has been modified to fit your TV screen – so I'd guess it isn't), and some scenes look a little tight but most come through reasonably unscathed and I'm fairly certain that this is sourced from the same elements that the laserdisc was taken from. The colors look okay and the black levels aren't half bad even if at times they look a bit murky, but Warner Brothers obviously didn't put any real effort into sprucing up the image at all as there is some fairly heavy grain and a little bit of softness to the picture. Overall though, everything is perfectly watchable, just don't go into this expecting a reference quality transfer cause that ain't what this release is all about. Edge enhancement and mpeg compression aren't a big problem (though they are there), but the lack of serious detail in the image is a little off putting at times. Like the other films in the recent batch of Cannon/Warner Brothers DVD releases, things could have been worse, but they sure could have been a lot better.