The Octagon

After the respectable to pretty good actioner A FORCE OF ONE, would-be thespian Chuck Norris, who passed away last March, followed up with 1980's rather unfortunate THE OCTAGON, a weirdly confused and sometimes even confusing motion picture that also commits the unpardonable sin of being dull.  And unintentionally funny, at least in the first act or two.  Chuck's previous ventures had distinguished screenwriters like Mark Medoff and Ernest Tidyman.  This time Paul Aaron (director of  FORCE) and Leigh Chapman, a woman who penned a few well regarded low budgeters, had the task and their script is a real twisty mess of poorly developed ideas that had potential.  Also, some amazingly bad, self aware dialogue, mainly via the female characters.  There are also ninjas, again.

Chuck plays Scott James, a (what else?) karate champion who has decided to retire from the ring and maybe enjoy life.  But one night his date with a dancer ends very badly after one of those ninjas that supposedly doesn't exist is waiting at her house.  But Scott isn't even shown reacting to her death, despite his being only a few feet away.  In an earlier scene, we've observed a group of students training at an academy for terrorists, who carry out political assassinations and other mean business.  Ninjas in the making who have committed to the discipline for life, or else.  

Meanwhile, we meet crusty mercenary/Second amendment nut Macran (Lee Van Cleef), who is an old bud of Scott's.  How does he fit in with the terrorists? And what about Scott's on-the-make would-be playboy pal A.J. (Art Hindle), who, in some unexplainable character motivation, takes it upon himself to go after the terrorists and their leader, the mysterious Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita), Scott's long estranged half-brother? Can you smell a revenge plot brewing?

There's more to THE OCTAGON than what I've recounted.  More characters who get unsatisfying arcs and more plot threads that seem complicated for their own sake.  A really interesting geopolitical/martial arts mashup should've played out in director Eric Karson's movie, but that didn't quite happen.  I haven't read the original screenplay but if this movie is the victim of Dann Cahn's editing or something else, I dunno.  What we have is a stew of intrigue and semi-interesting yet poorly developed characters in a movie that makes little sense.

But....for fans of bad movies, there's a bit to enjoy.  Beginning with Scott's thoughts, which are  whispered in voiceover.  Echoed, too.   And Karen Carlson's performance as Justine, a wealthy woman who seeks Seikura's head as he killed her father.  She plays her role as if in an intense soap opera, with some of the worst line readings of said bad dialogue I've heard lately.  She and all the women in this film are sexy but saddled with wordy dialogue that sounds like something out an undergrad psychology text.  Really odd.

Chuck's performance?  Regressive after his decent work in A FORCE OF ONE.  Quite lazy, as opposed to relaxed and natural.

Action? Precious little.  Even the climax is ho hum, due as much to blah fight choreography as Karson's unimaginative direction.  As in THE KILLER ELITE, ninjas are made to be boring and silly.