Dog Gone Ruff

• Top Dog
• Directed by Aaron “I’m Chuck’s Brother” Norris
• April 28, 1995

When his cop companion is shot and killed by terrorists, a dog named Reno joins with a tough cop to stop the racist organization. This sounds like the plot of a bad cartoon but it’s not. It’s the plot a live action movie starring Carlos “Chuck” Norris.

Chuck Norris is a name that generally conjures a view of the toughest of the tough. After all he doesn’t do pushups. He pushes the Earth down. Though Schwarzenegger and Stallone were possibly bigger in their heyday, his image has only grown over time. He is an icon that has transcended the action genre to become something greater. How else could he have Chuck Norris FAQs? His other contemporaries certainly didn’t get that type of a weird honor.

Sadly though here he stars in Top Dog which is the type of film that comes at the tail end of someone’s career. Or at least after the heyday of said career is over and whatever parts that propelled the person into stardom are drying up for them. In this case the action genre was dying as CGI took some of the punch out of those type of movies and people stopped looking for the overpowered determined hero of moral clarity who could stop any evil.

This is a movie where with a series of spin kicks a dog named Reno (Digby and Betty) and his sidekick cop Jake (Chuck Norris) end racism not only in America but throughout the world. Or sure seems like it by the way they talk up the threat. One thing that struck me is that it’s strongly implied that there is some network of racist terrorist groups fomenting racism and racist attacks throughout the world. This movie is about 30 years old and that sounds like an idea fresh from today.

Jake is a loose cannon cop in this action comedy and paired with a so-intelligent-it-could-be-human dog who is not only the sole witness to a murder but the de facto partner of the murdered cop (Carmine Caridi) with a cute grandkid (Erik von Detten). Don’t worry about the kid too much. He does not get killed. He really exists to give Jake a stronger reason to solve the case and get Reno in a whacky situation. As a character he breezes in and out of the story. 

Officer Grandpa got killed when he followed some suspicious characters to a warehouse after they left the scene of a fire caused by a bomb. I guess the best way to start a fire in a predominantly minority housing complex is as noticeable as possible. That distracts from the illegal arms shipments that Officer Elderly finds that necessitates his getting bumped to the end of his line.

As the story goes along it’s revealed those people are connected to the aforementioned racist network. The head of this racism network has been connected to numerous racist attacks, but apparently can never get arrested. Why? I’m not sure. Being a racist isn’t necessarily against the law, but it certainly seems like he was leading the attacks in some way and that is illegal. Anywho…

This is not good. Norris was never a great thespian. Serviceable more often than not for what he did. He could sell the material which is if you are performing anything is the most important thing. But this is family friendly comedy and Norris had no ability for this. It feels like a silly version of Cobra which was a ludicrous movie in and of itself.

Jake is the I-always-work-alone cop so often forced to get a partner in buddy cop movies. And Reno is the partner who won’t go away no matter how much he’s not welcome. His boss Capt. Ken Callahan (Clyde Kusatsu) has dreams of higher office. Jake’s mom (Herta Ware) offers sage advice as well as the one bit of info that helps to thwart the evil plot. Who can forget the cute kid that comes in just as we are finally forgetting about him? All safe stuff that feels like it should be making fun of the buddy cop genre but comes off as the Pureflix version of it instead.

Worse Top Dog waffles between a more serious action movie and a comedy and can never quite find its tone. It could’ve gone either way either way with it being played completely straight with Jake using this trained dog to identify the killers or genuinely funny yet clean but it never gets to either really instead remaining safe.

As a theatrical release-which this was-it’s kind of sad. It’s so unoffending that it never gets really entertaining. Small children will find this very good but the adults who are hoping to get through it because of the presence of Chuck Norris won’t. They’ll feel lied to. 

Top Dog is certainly a movie, but not a good one. If you find this and you have kids that you want to keep busy then this is certainly an option. If you’re a Norris fan, this is not one of his better efforts. Move on.