So wooden he’s petrified, Chuck Norris plays Texas small-town sheriff Dan Stevens in Silent Rage, a movie strangely lacking in action considering its Missing in Action star. Further problematic is that it moves as slow as parcel post during Christmastime.

After a man named John Kirby (Brian Libby, The Octagon) snaps and becomes an ax murderer, Stevens’ men gun him down. A few doctors try to save Kirby during emergency surgery, yet fail … until they secretly inject him with their experimental super-juice that alters his genetic structure, revives him and turns him into an emotionless — but rather sweaty — killing machine, not unlike that Halloween heel Michael Myers. Reasons one of the MDs (William Finley, Eaten Alive) after things get really out of hand, “Nobody’s gonna give us a Nobel Prize for murder.”

Eventually, yes, the cowboy-hatted Chuck gets to kick the bad guy — note that the operative word is “eventually.” Director Michael Miller (National Lampoon’s Class Reunion) takes his time, thereby robbing us of ours, staking out side trails for Sheriff Stevens to take, from rekindling the spark with a homely past lover (Toni Kalem, Reckless) to busting sleaze at a biker bar where permed skanks let their tattooed, tig ol’ bitties out for fetid air.

The latter sends comic-relief Deputy Charlie (Stephen Furst, National Lampoon’s Animal House) into a childlike frenzy of hormones as he calls for backup: “Billy, they were the biggest things I ever saw!” As silly as that is — Furst’s character is played as one step beyond the short bus — his boy-oh-boy outbursts are all Silent Rage has going for it. The movie takes a slice of slasher horror here and a chunk of speculative sci-fi there, pours a glass full of martial-arts action into the mix and yields a thriller without a single baked-in thrill. It’s a yawn stretched across 103 minutes. —Rod Lott

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