Movie review: ‘Good Guys Wear Black’

FloridaGator80

A few of my most recent movie reviews have been about films in the action-martial arts genre. Today’s review is of “Good Guys Wear Black.” While there is a martial arts component to the film and it stars Chuck Norris, it’s more than just an action-only flick. Norris will most likely never be considered at Oscar-level as an actor, but that’s OK because he is “watchable.” He has a great fan base because of that watchability and, outside of his early work fighting against Bruce Lee in “The Way of the Dragon” (click here for my review), he’s always played the good guy and his fans appreciate that he doesn’t have a rep as an anti-hero or bad guy. “Good Guys Wear Black” is worth your time despite lacking in some production values and a very underperforming cast. However, Chuck does drive a totally sweet turbo Porsche with the “whale tail” and that alone makes the movie cool.

‘Good Guys Wear Black’
(1978; 95 minutes; rated PG; directed by Ted Post and starring Chuck Norris, Anne Archer and James Franciscus)

NO SURPRISE: CHUCK NORRIS IS THE GOOD GUY IN THIS ONE

(NOTE: I expanded this review with additional opinion and trivia and the updating of links on Nov. 20, 2024. I updated it on March 20, 2026, to note the passing of Chuck Norris.)

Movies starring Chuck Norris are predictable: He’s the good guy with a moral compass super-glued solidly to “good;” he’s loyal; he’s tough; and he means every word that he speaks and bad guys never take to heart. “Good Guys Wear Black” from 1978 was his breakthrough film in which he headlined and the movie, while suffering from poor production to so-so acting, gave audiences what to expect in the future from Mr. Norris.

(CLICK here … for all my reviews of movies)
(CLICK here … for a chronological list of my reviews)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of ‘007’ movies)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of sports movies)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of war movies)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of Christmas movies)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of horror movies)

“Good Guys” appears more like a TV movie of the era than a major motion picture, with awful production values and especially the décor of the time that is supposed to show the style of affluence, but just comes off head-shakingly dated. Heck, a doorman is actually dressed in a uniform with fringe-style epaulets!

Still, you have to forgive “Good Guys” for the production sins and see how the plot goes from quickly tedious to actually bringing you along with the storyline. Although your basic action movie of the day, compared to what’s now being released as “motion pictures,” “Good Guys” does better with actually having actors act in scenes and not just being an excuse to go from one fight scene to the next.

In “Good Guys,” Norris does some martial arts, culminating with the movie’s major fight scene where Chuck kicks (and punches) the tar out of three tough guys in a parking lot brawl, but that’s not the focus of the film.

The story of “Good Guys” is that Norris was the leader of a failed mission to rescue POWs at the end of the Vietnam war. Remember, this film was released only three years following the U.S. exit from Vietnam and the wounds from the war were still fresh for many. Speed forward a few years and the survivors of the mission are being picked off one-by-one.

Of course, the mission had been compromised from the beginning as a sop to the North Vietnamese leadership during peace talks. They wanted Norris’ unit wiped out as part of the U.S. getting a deal on peace and got their wish, except that a handful of the “Black Tigers” of “Operation Phoenix” survived and now they’re being killed in individual assassinations.

But why?

As the movie proceeds, you find out more and more about the conspiracy. It is this sort of depth that such a low-budget action film of that day that sets it apart from others. It also shows Norris as a test driver of a race car and he’s a professor, too. Further, he believes the Vietnam war is in his life’s mirror and he doesn’t want to reopen old wounds. No such luck, Chuck!

The plot moves along crisply and that it ultimately leads to the man who’s about to become the U.S. Secretary of State. It is a nice layering of the plot that helps make this one better than so many similar ones from back-in-the-day.

Well, you know that’s something that’s absolutely not gonna sit well with Chuck!

Now, here’s a look at the top of the cast …

  • Norris pretty much set the tone for his future acting style with this one as “John T. Booker.” He would go on to make other Vietnam war-themed films and, of course, has always been tops with martial arts – including “Sidekicks” in which he helps a boy fulfill a martial arts dream (click here for my review). I like that Norris comes across as both tough as well as usually calm and collected. He has a touch of earnestness that helps him earn fans. Chuck’s most recognizable role is as TV’s “Walker, Texas Ranger” and he did year-in-and-year-out action flicks starting with “The Octagon” (click here to read my review) in 1980 and followed by efforts such as “Silent Rage,” “Forced Vengeance,” “Lone Wolf McQuade” and “Missing in Action.” You’ve seen him in “The Expendables 2,” where his character was “Booker,” as more recently on an episode of the re-made tee-vee series “Hawaii Five-O.” The year before “Good Guys Wear Black,” Norris did “Breaker! Breaker!” in the era of the CB radio (click here to read my review). Norris died in March 2026 in Hawaii at 86, just nine days after his birthday of March 10.
  • An Oscar nominee (not for this one), Anne Archer was in two films and a TV movie released in 1980. Archer, who would nab her nomination for “Fatal Attraction,” does a solid job as what appears to be at first a femme fatale character, but who is truly on the side of the good folks. However, Archer never manages to elevate her character, but, in all fairness, she didn’t have much of a chance with the role of “Margaret” was written. Archer was also in “Patriot Games” with Harrison Ford (from the Tom Clancy novel of the same name), “Raise the Titanic” and TV series such as “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
  • A Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy nominee (both for TV’s “Room 222”), Lloyd Haynes plays “Murray Saunders” and is the insider who steers everything to a victory for the good guys. Haynes does a nice job of being calm, collected and serious. His character has stamina throughout the film and is there in the end with Norris, riding off with victory in hand. Haynes was on TV shows as diverse as the original “Star Trek,” “Batman” and “Tarzan” and was in films such as Howard Hughes’ favorite: “Ice Station Zebra” with Rock Hudson (click here to read my review). He died of cancer at 56 in 1982.
  • A Primetime Emmy nominee, James Franciscus plays “Conrad Morgan,” who is the smooth-talking, suave bad guy headed to become the U.S. Secretary of State … until Norris gets really involved. Franciscus, like others, has a spike of a great scene, but doesn’t get much of a chance to show his acting chops. He was nominated as co-producer of the TV flick “Heidi” (see a note about this production at the end of this review and how it became iconic because of an interrupted football game) and was in the movie “The Greek Tycoon” and made his early mark through appearances on many TV show. Franciscus died at 57 in 1991 of emphysema.
  • Dana Andrews plays “Edgar Harolds” and he holds the key to what’s going on and the information that brings the conspiracy to a head. Andrews, like Haynes, is the best of the actors in “Good Guys” and it shows in his big scene. Andrews was in “The Ox-Bow Incident” and co-starred in several flicks in the 1940s such as “Laura” with Gene Tierney, “The Best Years of Our Lives” with Myrna Loy and “Fallen Angel” with Alice Faye. Andrews was in the classic World War II film “Battle of the Bulge” (click here for my review) and, to his great credit, on an episode of the kitschy TV series “The Love Boat” (click here for my look at that sensational series). He died at 83 in 1992 of pneumonia and congestive heart failure.
  • Soon-Tek Oh, who plays “Maj. Mhin Van Thieu,” was billed as Soon-Teck Oh in the film’s credits and he is the actor who suffers the most from having the least to work with in “Good Guys.” His character went from good to bad, but it is never given any chance to make something of the character’s dichotomy. Oh’s lowest point is when he’s wearing a awful disguise while traveling and following Norris before the showdown confrontation with him (guess who wins when Chuck gives a kick through Oh’s car’s windshield?). Like others in the supporting cast, I would have liked Oh to have had a shot at doing something better in the film. I liked Oh in “The Final Countdown” (click here to read my review) and, of course, as a good guy in the “007” feature “The Man With the Golden Gun” (click here to read my review). He was on nearly every popular TV series from the mid-’60s into the early 1980s. He died at 85 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease in 2018. Click here for list of his roles in film and on TV …

After these six characters, there’s very little to judge from the rest of the supporting cast, although you do get Jim “Gilligan’s Island” Backus in a small role as the doorman at “Harolds’” apartment building. Backus, who had a prolific 255 acting credits over six decades beginning the late 1940s, appeared on just about any TV show you can name from the mid-1960s into the early 1980s. The iconic voice of “Mr. Magoo,” Backus, who was also in “Rebel Without a Cause” with James Dean, and he died of pneumonia at 76 in 1989.

Although I’ve already criticized the production values that make this one look more like a TV movie rather than a motion picture, you can forgive filmmakers. They didn’t have CGI to help with the stunts, such as the penultimate scene when Norris drives himself and the bad guy into the Pacific Ocean in a limousine, and they couldn’t help that the style of the day included wood paneling and shag rugs.

In the end, I like that Norris offers his best effort with what would become his signature style … and that he drives the nasty “whale-tail” Porsche 911 turbo (called the Type 930) that you see in one of the film’s promotional posters.

“Good Guys Wear Black” was No. 30 at the U.S. box office in 1978, with $18.3 million in ticket sales, according to The Numbers website. The No. 1 film was “Grease” and it made $153 million (or $159.9 million according to another website) and others at the top of the heap included “Jaws 2,” “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” “Hooper” with Burt Reynolds and “Every Which Way But Loose” with Clint Eastwood. Here are the films from 1978 that I’ve reviewed for my blog:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com and Wiki”):

  • Norris’ birth name is Carlos Ray Norris and his nickname is “Ground Chuck;” Franciscus’ middle name was Grover; and Andrews’ first name was Carver.
  • The TV movie “Heidi” holds a special place in sports history: NBC stopped coverage of the Oakland Raiders-New York Jets game on Nov. 17, 1968, to go to the premiere of “Heidi.” The Raiders scored two touchdowns in the final nine seconds to win the game and fans howled their anger at the network. The game became known as the “Heidi” game and led to networks making sure that live sports events were covered to the end.
  • “Good Guys” is Norris’ first character who is a veteran of the Vietnam war.
  • Oh was part of the vanguard of Asian actors in Southern California theater, film and TV in the 1960s; earned a Masters degree in acting and playwriting at UCLA; and he resolved to work to end the stereotypical Asian character who was servile, according to IMDb.com. A variety of spellings of his name included Sun-Taek Oh and Soon-Taik Oh.
  • During filming of “Good Guys,” Norris was quoted as comparing favorably his film “Breaker! Breaker!” to Clint Eastwood’s “A Fistful of Dollars” and “Good Guys” with Clint’s “Dirty Harry” (click here for my review). My comment: Sorry, Chuck, I enjoy your films, but both of those doesn’t even come close to either of those efforts by Clint.
  • According to Wiki, Norris tells the story of shopping the film around and when he got to his last interview with a producer, he tried to think what he hadn’t said to others that could be a selling point. Norris is quoted as saying, “And when I met the producer, he asked me the same question the others asked, ‘Chuck, why will this movie make money?’ And I said, ‘First of all, there’s four million karate people in America. They all know who I am. And if only half of them go to the movie, that’s a $6 million gross on a $1 million budget.’ And he said, ‘Sounds good to me.’”

© Chuck Curry and A Gator in Naples,
©2022, ©2024
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without
express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner
is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that
full and clear credit is given to Chuck Curry and A Gator in Naples
with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Unknown's avatar

Published by FloridaGator80

Leave a Reply