INVASION U.S.A.
Chuck Norris Fact: Chuck Norris does not wear a watch, he decides what time it is
Spoilers for Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
I’m not going to waste time in this essay pretending that Invasion U.S.A. is a good film. However, it is hard to deny that it’s an entertaining one. This is quintessential Cannon Films stuff, capturing the zeitgeist of cinema audiences by jumping on trends, making a quick and dirty film with a rising action star, and blowing stuff up.
Chuck Norris, who was coming off the success of Missing in Action (1984, directed by Joseph Zito, who helms this as well), plays Matt Hunter. Hunter is a former CIA agent, who is forced out of retirement when a group of Cuban/Soviet guerillas conduct a series of random attacks across Florida. They aim to start a race war across America and take control of the country in the ensuing chaos.
The terrorists are led by an old nemesis of Hunter, Mikal Rostov (Richard Lynch), but to be honest, this adds little more than the paper-thin justification for the antagonist to quickly abandon any semblance of his plan. However, it should be noted that Lynch is wildly entertaining in the role, chewing through the scenery as he gleefully whirls a bazooka around.
But no one is watching Invasion U.S.A. for the plot. There have been better Cold War films made, and far better action films made. To break this down scene-by-scene would reveal a series of explosions and incredible stunts, broken up by non-sensical exposition and long shots of a very stoic Chuck Norris driving his pick-up truck.
So why pick this film to examine? What scene from this film could give us a greater insight into the process of filmmaking, or add some deeper level of meaning?
None of them, to be frank. But there is always space for something that entertains just for the sake of entertaining. I laughed a lot during this film, often not due to anything purposeful from the filmmakers. I’m sure that Norris and Zito thought it looked incredibly cool when the final confrontation had two men pointing bazookas at each other.
I’m also sure that the hundreds of guerrillas landing on the beach would have been an awesome visual, had they not all jumped into a row of trucks that presumably had been parked on the side of the road for days until their arrival.
These gaps in logic lead to the scene that made me laugh hard enough that I had to pause the film. Hunter is chasing a group of terrorists out of the city, and at the same time, a bus filled with children being evacuated to the countryside starts its journey down the same highway.
As traffic builds up at a checkpoint, the terrorists speed down the hard shoulder and catch up with the bus. One of them leans out of the window and places a bomb on the side. The timer starts to run down, with just 19 seconds on the clock.
Already the scene is broken. Hunter could have been right behind the terrorists and the timer would have likely run out before we managed to grab it. There’s no tension because there are two undeniable facts contradicting each other.
Those children are dead. There’s no way for Hunter or anyone to save them.
This is not the sort of film to break the taboo of killing children on screen. It’s a very silly action film, the sort where the violence is near bloodless, and the body count grows at such a rate that it becomes meaningless.
Hunter isn’t right behind the terrorists though, and this is what makes the scene hilarious. Hunter is still in traffic, back at the checkpoint. We can tell from the speed of the terrorists’ car, that they and the bus of children is far out of his sight at this point.
Still, Hunter floors it. He speeds down the hard shoulder and catches up with the bus. By this point, we’ve already cut back to the bomb a couple of times and seen it click past 15 seconds, and then 10 seconds. Hunter breaks all laws of physics to reach that bus and still, there are just two seconds left when he grabs the bomb. By all rights, that bomb is going off in his hand, killing Chuck Norris (if such a thing were possible) and more than likely destroying the bus.
I was already laughing at this point. Because there was no way that the protagonist was going to be killed. Not in a film like this. This isn’t Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan), where Bruce Willis’ character faces real peril, even though we never truly believe he will die. Invasion U.S.A. is taken directly from the Schwarzenegger and Stallone school of action films, where the hero is damn-near invincible.
So, what does Hunter manage to do in those two seconds? How does he escape the bomb blast? Simple. He drives for a solid ten seconds until he catches up with the terrorists, pulls up alongside them, drops the quippiest of quips and then throws the bomb into the car. Even then, he still has time to swerve away and avoid the blast.
I don’t point this out to mock the film, per se. This blatant disregard for any sort of realism added to my enjoyment hugely. Some of the funniest comedies haven’t made me laugh in the way I laughed at this scene. I feel like this could be seen as the kick-off point for the Chuck Norris Facts series of jokes.
How could it not be, when the man so clearly ignores the passing of time to catch the bad guy?
Director: Joseph Zito
Writers: James Bruner, Chuck Norris
Starring: Chuck Norris, Richard Lynch, Melissa Prophet, Alexander Zale
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