Invasion U.S.A.

Invasion U.S.A. wasn’t made, it was plugged in.  There are pieces and parts haphazardly glued together to make what seems to be a narrative feature, but I couldn’t make head or tails of it.  There are gaps and holes of logic in this movie that Eval Knievel wouldn’t want to leap over.  What did I expect from the director of Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter?

Chuck Norris hits a low point just a few months after hitting a high point with Andy Davis’ terrific Code of Silence.  He’s the life preserver of Cannon Films, a meat and potatoes company that makes action pictures that are bland enough to satisfy the global box office.

Norris doesn’t really play a character here.  He’s really just playing the image that appears on most of his movie posters – the tough guy with a stern expression who has weapons clenched in each fist while stuff is blow’d up behind him.  He’s better than this.  I know that because I’ve seen him give a performance.  I don’t know what he was asked to do here but whatever it is, he does very little of it.

The movie is a low-rent retread of Red Dawn featuring a band of terrorist who come ashore in Florida and terrorize innocent, peace-loving Americans as they go about their business.  These dirty guys are happy to blow up shopping malls, church services and school buses while being underscored by a musical soundtrack that tells me that the composer only got paid for less than five minutes of material.  This is best illustrated when the leader of the evil terrorist fires a rocket launcher at a happy family while they are decorating the Christmas tree.

The idea is illustrated that if they start enough trouble that eventually the government will crumble.  One could write books about what’s wrong with that theory, but the leader Rostov doesn’t exactly illustrate where he come from.  Maybe he’s a Russian (his accent slips in and out), his crew seems to be international and racially mixed.  Maybe that’s so that the filmmakers won’t incur complaints from any specific country or ethnic group.

The turd in their punchbowl is Chuck Norris playing a one man strike force who is brought out of retirement – from what I wasn’t clear – to drive around in his big ‘ol pick up truck and mow down the bad guys.  At one point, he is driving his truck down a highway and manages to pull an explosive off of a moving school bus and then drive up next to the bad guy’s car and stick it to the hood.  Someone could write a doctoral thesis on the physics involved in this scene.

Invasion USA is like a bad grilled cheese where you get the cheese but the bread is wet and the experience is too bland to even comment on.  This is a bad movie, really bad, obnoxiously bad.