The Civil War is over, so Ezra Justice's "Justice Riders" can go their separate ways...and they do. Ezra and his former slave and childhood friend Nate return to Tennesse to rebuild the family plantation. Reginald Bonesteel heads off to the California gold country in search of wealth. Harry Whitecloud returns to Princeton to get his medical degree. The Hawkins twins, Roberto and Carlos, plan to raise some hell in St. Louis, then head down to New Orleans and raise some more.
But while the war might be over, the wounds that it made are still raw and painful. There is also a lot of anger. Anger that is being directed at the former slaves by a group known as the Klu Klux Klan. A group that does not take kindly to Ezra Justice's close friendship with his former slave. Soon the Justice Riders regroup to face A Threat to Justice.
That old descriptive saw for chaos, "The cowboy jumped onto his horse and road off in all directions," is a perfect one for A Threat to Justice, the directionless sequel to Chuck Norris's The Justice Riders. A quick read book (I polished it off in about a day) that takes the reader nowhere fast. Threat spends 220 of its 236 pages meandering to a perfunctory climax that is distinctly anti-climatic, because the very real evil that the Justice Riders face down (racism) is still around today, so their triumph is a hollow one.
Everything that actor turned author Chuck Norris (with the assist of his brother Aaron, writer Ken Abraham and screenwriter Tim Grayem) got right with the first Justice Riders novel, gets wrong this time around. The religious aspects are ham-fisted and about as subtle as a roundhouse kick to the face. The action/adventure elements are far too paltry, with nothing coming close to the sinking of the Sultana set piece from the first book, and the drama shallow and predictable. Threat just sits there as its characters wander around, looking for something to do, while I sat there reading, waiting for something exciting to happen. It didn't.
There has not been a new Justice Riders adventure since this effort debuted in 2007. I am going to assume that Norris was distracted from doing another entry by his work on his non-fiction effort Black Belt Patriotism and hope that the series will not end with this lackluster "sophomore slump."
), a popular political figure and good friend of Alex Cahill, comes under Walker and Trivette's scrutiny when a teen-aged mother (Danica McKellar, The Wonder Years) accuses the man of arranging the kidnapping of her baby.
) enthusiastically chews up the scenery as the villainous Reid Stedler, but, when it comes to being a slimy jerk, Ray Wise is nowhere near as good as Andrew Robinson (who played a very similar corrupt politician in season one's A Shadow in the Night). As the supposedly distraught mother of a missing infant, Danica McKellar appears to be more annoyed than almost sick to death with worry, a dramatic misstep that makes Alex and Trivette's disbelief easier to believe than Walker's resolute stance that the girl is telling the truth and Carlson is the real liar. The action (save for the inevitable face-off between Stedler and Walker) is rather tepid, and the baby kidnapping sequences lack tension. This lullaby won't keep you awake through nap time.
) comes to Dallas to assassinate a popular senator (Ben Masters), but first he has to get past Walker and Trivette.
, which is erroneously titled as the first on the DVD set. (Walker's first season actually consisted of a pilot tele-movie, One Riot, One Ranger, and two follow-up episodes.) What makes it so good is less the primary assassination plot and more the touching subplot involving a dying ranger's (Stuart Whitman) desperate attempt to capture the killer of his only son; Whitman brings just the right amount of dramatic weight to the character of Laredo Boyd. Fleshing out this particular storyline are veteran tough guy character actors R.G. Armstrong (
, 
, and 
) and L. Q Jones (
, 
, and 
). It's always a pleasure to watch these gentlemen work. Less pleasurable is an underdeveloped subplot involving the temptation given Alex Cahill (Sheree J. Wilson) to enter into an adulterous affair with the visiting Senator and its resolution. Trivette seems far more concerned about the attempted seduction than Walker, and the motivation behind Alex's final decision undercuts the moral authority of her character. But the foreground elements are strong enough that it becomes easy for me to forgive the dramatic misstep of a decidedly minor subplot.
, but with Walker as Smokey and a murderous thug as the Bandit.
clip...it really does all come together, doesn't it?)
and 
. In fact, the episode is rather up front about the sources it borrows from. The review of a subject's case file and the group vote is straight out of 
, Charles Bronson did 
, and Chuck Norris starred in 
) confesses to Norris that, when he was a young boy, he inadvertently killed his pet dog. Not funny. But neither of those stumbles ruins what is otherwise an entertaining, if a bit uneven, piece of schlock.
) who is on the run from the mafia. It seems that the boy has inadvertently stolen some drugs and he hopes to impress his lawbreaker dad with them.
).
) is kidnapped by the Mexican Mafia's vicious leader (Yul Vazquez), Walker and Trivette head south of the border to conduct an off duty rescue mission.
? And didn't Walker and Trivette storm an armored compound in the second season's third episode, In the Name of God? Come to think of it, didn't episode five of season nine, 
1 and 
.
) coerces his customers into sending their best men to Dallas, so he can properly erase the legal nuisance. If the best hired guns in the country can't do the job, then the Chairman has one final maneuver to make.
). While the group is successful in building a case against another one of the Chairman's high paying clients, the criminal mastermind is quick to concoct a deadly plan to try and stop Gage (Judson Mills) and Sydney (Nia Peeples) from safely escorting a crucial witness to his deposition.
, I can't help but wonder why the Chairman didn't just use a bomb instead.
) switches to snitches. It just so happens that a kindly dry cleaner (Shelly Berman, 
) has witnessed the son of one of The Chairman's customers kill another man. Walker and the Gang struggle to keep the witness safe while they also try to lure The Chairman's thug Lazarus into a trap.
. Everybody, from The Chairman to Walker, gets to bust some heads at one point or another. While the gang draws closer to The Chairman, they aren't quite close enough the actually catch him. There is still another story or two to go.
). The Chairman is hacking into the F.B.I.'s computers and then selling crucial information about undercover investigations to numerous drug lords. Walker becomes involved when a local drug lord (Andrew Divioff, 
) attempts to kill a Texas senator (Ann Jillian).
, has a cameo as one of the doomed agents.
) is thrilled that an old friend of his is becoming a professional wrestler, named The Avenging Angel. But the Angel's kindly manager (Ernest Borgnine, 
) is being muscled into an unwanted partnership with a shady businessman, one that won't take no for an answer.
. (Just go to the Book News section for the first comment, or check out the review in the Action/Adventure, Western, or Christian sections.) That comment resulted in a brief correspondence with Tim Grayem, one of the co-authors. I shared how my late wife and our son were also huge Walker fans. Learning that my son Christopher had lost his mother at such a young age (he was nine when she died) touched their hearts. So an offer was made. Just a small token of good will. It was something completely unexpected, but it was a Christmas gift that my son cherished.
that, ironically enough, featured a widowed hero whose wife (and mother of his infant child) had been dead the exact same amount of time as 
. I guess an argument could be made that the Bond movie 
was also inspired by Noriega, or perhaps I'm just making the connection because 
as being a huge hit. The 
and just about every movie Chuck made afterward. I think it's obvious that Ken Abraham and Tim Grayem are ghost writing for the Norris boys.
, so reading 
Recent Comments