A load of terrorists land on a Florida beach on a bright moonlit night in several dozen World War II-vintage landing craft, board a fleet of rented trucks and head for various key cities around America where they blow up buildings and kill innocent people.
Who the terrorists actually are, who they are working for, or why they are doing all this is never explained at all. Since there are Russian names sprinkled among the villains, it is safe to assume the Soviet communist menace is behind it. Maybe? But there are also Cubans amongst the group and representatives of some unidentified Arab state.
Enter Chuck Norris, this time as Matt Hunter, an ex-intelligence agent who sneers to his former boss, “I work alone”. Yes, he does. And he kills more people than Rambo.
The violence in this film is much more sadistic than usual, and for that matter, so is Norris.
At one point, he pins a bad guy’s hand to a table with a knife so he can extract information from him. Then Norris hands him a grenade minus a pin (yes, the bad guy could simply throw the grenade out the window, possibly blowing up innocent bystanders, but that never seems to occur to Norris or the baddie).
Of course, the villains are much worse. We see the terrorists bazooka a household where a typical American family is decorating their Christmas tree, bomb a department store where innocent people are shopping, and, with Norris in hot pursuit, virtually demolish a shopping mall.
The film quickly becomes a numbing series of violent vignettes and, in the end, there is the inevitable showdown between Norris and the top bad guy, Rostov (Richard Lynch), who has an obsessive grudge against Norris, which seems to go on forever.
Matt Hunter
Chuck Norris
Mikhail Rostov
Richard Lynch
McGuire
Melissa Prophet
Nikko
Alexander Zale
Tomas
Alex Colon
Cassidy
Eddie Jones
Johnston
Jon DeVries
Harper
James O’Sullivan
Mickey
Billy Drago
Castillo
Jaime Sánchez
John Eagle
Dehl Berti
Flynn
Stephen Markle
Kurt
Shane McCamey
Adams
Martin Shakar
Koyo
James Pax
Director
Joseph Zito