Stream It or Skip It: ‘Agent Recon,’ a Chuck Norris Sci-Fi Movie on Hulu

Writer-director-star Derek Ting makes a play for streaming audiences with Agent Recon, a sci-fi action movie made with the participation of aging action icon Chuck Norris. (“Co-starring” in this case would be a misleading distinction.) There are some low-budget genre gems hiding on various streaming services, and this one seems to be breaking out. Is it worth your time?

AGENT RECON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Let’s have lead character Jim Yung (Derek Ting) take this one: “I never really understood why I was given these powers. My foster parents disowned me when I was 18. I had headaches when I was growing up, so I was never really good at anything. I wanted to join the CIA and got rejected. But then I was exposed to this red dust called the Ash. The Ash took over my friends, controlled them, but somehow it gave me strength, reflexes, and more. Then I met Alastair, the founder and leader of the Earth Security Unit. He taught me how to wield those powers, and tap into an energy called manna. He was killed by Kinians, an ancient alien race. Now we’re on the run. Where to? I’m really not sure. But I know Alastair has a plan.” That’s the immediately convoluted setup to Agent Recon, recited in a confusing jumble over establishing shots that don’t establish anything, to the point where it’s not even clear that the movie is some kind of a sequel to previous installments Agent Intelligence and Agent Revelation. This particular movie is actually about Jim, his fellow Earth Security Unit member Tanya (Sylvia Kwan), and gruff Colonel Green (Marc Singer) on a investigatory/rescue mission, helped along by the preserved, computerized consciousness of the aforementioned Alastair (Chuck Norris, just the actor you think of when casting a human computer).

What Will It Remind You Of? Maybe the humans-meet-alien-tech movie Skyline and its weirder straight-to-video sequels, which have garnered a cult following.

Performance Worth Watching: “Worth watching” is a stretch, but the least embarrassed should be Kwan, who keeps her head down and mostly says her lines correctly. This is not a bar that her co-stars meet so easily.

Memorable Dialogue: That exposition-dump opening is memorable for its rhythmless rambling, but during the movie proper, we learn that the aliens (who conveniently look like humans wearing goggles and masks) are most vulnerable in the liver – which means there are repeated mid-shoot-out cries of “get ‘em in the liver!”

Sex and Skin: This movie will make you long for the sweet escape of any nudity at all, even from Chuck Norris. But no dice.

Our Take: It’s most likely that genre fans will tune into Agent Recon because it’s a new sci-fi-action movie advertising a role from Chuck Norris, so those folks should know upfront that Norris’s appearance in this movie barely qualifies as proof of life, much less a performance. Playing a sort of A.I. repository of a dead human character, Norris obviously completed most of his scenes via green-screen: For much of the movie, his occasional and largely motionless close-ups have a weird outlined effect, and he only ever shares the frame with other actors when shot from the back; body doubles and/or dummies were clearly employed. Later, he clocks in for an alleged action sequence where he trudges through some nondescript ruins – most of the movie’s sets look less designed than abandoned – while pretending to fire some automatic weapons. 

At least you can’t accuse writer-director-star Derek Ting of trying to make himself look cool; his own fight sequences are just as lumbering and lifeless, augmented with crummy digital effects to show off his character’s ill-defined alien-related powers. (The aliens themselves, as mentioned, just look like anonymous foot-soldiers. Or are they anonymous foot soldiers controlled by unseen aliens? I failed to receive clarity on this matter.) The bad action sequences give the actors – Norris included! – a break from frequently mis-emphasizing the words in stock phrases, suggesting that second takes were not an option for some scenes. Stock footage, alongside seemingly every second of anything Norris shot for the movie, is used to inch the sans-credits running time past 80 minutes. (Just for good measure, the opening and closing credits repeat much of the same information.)

Look, low-budget filmmaking is not a crime. But it also doesn’t cost millions of dollars for a filmmaker to learn spatial continuity, write dialogue that moves beyond nonstop exposition-dumping, or develop any kind of editing rhythm that draws basic connections between successive images. Every element of Agent Recon, from the nonsensical title on down, feels like something that was included because it seems like something a movie might have. For reference, see literally any other movie on Hulu instead.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Agent Recon is one of those movies you don’t want to call one of the worst of the year, because it doesn’t seem fair to call it a movie at all, as it doesn’t give the impression of being made by professionals. Unless you’re scouting for a new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.