The definitive Reagan-era, “rah, rah, America”, blow-’em-up movie. It brings the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air—every two or three minutes, at least. Chuck Norris stars as one of the very few people here who doesn’t get shot or exploded or thrown from a roof or taken down by a split-second knife throw. He’s the only guy who can stop a brutal Russian terrorist (frosty-eyed B-movie stalwart Richard Lynch) while slinging out one-line quips along the way. Our Russian has a giant army that’s landed on US shores to destroy our way of life, along with our malls, amusement parks, school buses, suburban homes and Latino night clubs. You can criticize this movie for a lot, both aesthetically and politically—though if you ask me, the terrorist group’s racial rainbow of Asians, blacks, Eastern Europeans and vaguely South American types is more funny than anything else—but you can’t say that it skimps on the action. This is one of the top fire-breathers of the 80s. If there’s a quiet scene, give it about ten, fifteen seconds before a bazooka blast, bomb or rampaging truck stops by to say hello. There are also enough effective jump scares and sudden bursts of carnage to remind us that director Joseph Zito had just come off from making the best Friday the 13th movie in the series (Part IV, that infamous “Final Chapter”). It’s a Cannon classic that delivers the goods. Its depiction of an America gripped in terrorist paranoia is also weirdly prescient thirty years later, in a cartoon sort of way.