Chuck Norris will go down as one of the great action stars of American movies. Although his pictures didn’t have the budgets of his 80s contemporaries, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a good deal of Norris’ films were lean, exciting, and featured top notch action and stunts from the world class Martial Arts legend. In the late 90s and early 2000’s, films of that ilk became relegated to the video shelves. While finding big success on the small screen with his hit series, Walker, Texas Ranger, Norris didn’t make many theatrical films and would do only the occasional television movie and a guest spot here and there. His cameo (at age 72) in the second installment of the Expendables films promised a return to big action flicks that never came to fruition. Enter 2024 and writer-director-star Derek Ting’s Agent Recon, a film whose ads teased a more official return for the now 84 year old Norris.

Ting’s latest is the third in a series that began with 2017’s Agent Intelligence and continued with 2021’s Agent Revelation. Norris expressed interest in doing another action picture (the man is still in great shape for his age) and is said to have warmed to Ting’s self-penned screenplay. The action legend plays Alastair, a Marine commander who was killed in action. This being a film with a healthy dose of Sci-Fi, the character has his memories stored in a cyborg designed in the form of Norris’ Alastair.

The positive news is that Chuck Norris looks good and gets a few chances to grab big weapons and mow down villains. The bad news is that these moments come too late and are much too short. For half of Norris’ screen time (which doesn’t amount to a lot), the actor is sitting on a table, motionless, speaking as the cyborg’s computer. Still, it is great to see ol’ Chuck back on screen. With his son Dakota choreographing his father’s combat sequences, perhaps this will open the door to a few more films, as Norris proves (if only for a moment) that he still has some fight left in him.

As for Agent Recon’s plot, a covert military task force tracks a mysterious energy disturbance at a secret base in New Mexico, a place where experiments on alien technology are rumored to be taking place. Rookie soldier Jim (Ting) goes on a mission led by Colonel Green (Marc Singer) and his team of kick-ass marines to track the source of the disturbance. Col. Green and his team find themselves doing battle against a creature with the ability to control people’s minds. The fight for the survival of the human race commences.

One could pick at the low production values and over-reliance on computer graphics, but modern action fans who go into this one just want to see Chuck Norris and have a good time watching a low-budget popcorn movie. To be fair, Ting pretty much overcomes his low budget and achieves a good look in many scenes, especially inside the secret base. While many could be disappointed at how the action legend is (under) used, they should take joy in seeing Norris returning to films.

As for the action, there is some good fight choreography now and again. It must be said that the hand to hand combat is more fun than the gunplay, until Chuck Norris picks up the biggest weapon he can find and fights back in a scene designed as an homage to both Jesse Ventura in Predator and to the action era where Norris shined brightest.