Is there anything – and this includes a synthesized score – that doesn’t fit Code of Silence? It’s both character and tension, filling every scene with violence and desperation as plainclothes soldiers risk life and limb on the grimy streets of Chicago as gangs go toe-to-toe with each other in an epic power struggle.
Directed by Andrew Davis (“The Fugitive”), the film opens with Norris, police sergeant Eddie Cusack, posing as a scavenger with a red bandanna around his neck as a sting operation is about to begin. His watchers – Detectives Dorato (Dennis Farina, Crime Story), Brennan (Ron Dean), and Music (Gene Barge) – are all in place.
The surprise is palpable. There are many moving parts in this exciting opening, and they all work in unison to create an explosive opening that remains the quintessential action-adventure genre.
Code of Silence is a complete set of firearms, drugs and bombastic kicks. And before the sting operation goes to waste thanks to some dubious painters who come to work on a non-existent building, Mr. Chuck Norris kicks everyone’s ass. A month into planning, an innocent boy is murdered in a cramped apartment hallway by Detective
Craigie (Ralph Foody), the alcoholic cop in charge of training rookie Nick Kopalas (Joseph Gusaldo).
It’s blood for blood, and thus the war between cops and criminals starts again. Only one person will stand. It is Norris’ flagship vehicle and is the most attractive and expressive. Norris is Cusack. The film brings together everything that excites Norris and he delivers a knockout punch as a result. The vulgar, cruel and completely infuriated Code of Silence is a righteous cause.
Code of Silence also, thanks to the inclusion of the new police 3-axis robot Prowler (introduced by John Mahoney (of Frasier), does not shy away from the changing times. Even if Norris is the last to embrace this idea of Robots on the streets, he needs guards, and Norris is not up to sleep, have him a 24-hour shift of flying fists of fury and good old American freedom!
Code of Silence – now on sparkling Blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber Studio Classics – is the movie you’ve been looking for.