Invasion USA
Invasion USA is the quintessential 80 Chuck Norris movie, made at the height of the Golan Globus days when America was badass and Russa was evil. It embraces and gets away with things modern cancel culture would not allow to exist even as a Platonic idea.
The movie is about a small army of insurrectionist Communists, composed of Russian elites and Cuban revolutionaries, who storm Miami to take over America one shopping mall at a time. The main villain is man named Rostov, who has a past with Norris and looks like a shriveled corpse. He’s completely ruthless, killing a drug dealer by popping him in the dick for no reason, smashing a hooker’s face down on as she snorts cocaine with straw going up her nose, then throws her out the window. He’s not the sort of single-minded, uncompromising villain with a political ideal, but rather just an asshole.
Norris plays a former CIA operative, of course in sunny retirement an only trying to enjoy life with his friend and armadillo. But then Rostov and his gang show up on airboats – but wait, there’s more! – and blow the hell out of Norris’s home and kill his friend. Now that’s some major damage! This pisses Norris off and convinces him to fight Rostov with all the personal rage of a karate-weapons-demolition master in his prime.
Most of the movie involves shootouts – the best and most entertaining happening in a mall, with Christmas decorations and little kids everywhere. Rostov blows up an entire neighborhood with a bazooka from the back of an SUV. It’s really fun describing this movie in the simplest terms because you just know that’s how the script was written.
Another scene involves a school bus the guerillas put a bomb on, which Norris simply takes off and puts right back on their car.
Norris has some pretty nonsensical lines – “I’m going to hit you with so many rights you’re going to beg for a left” – that sound exactly what a writer would come up with given the events in this movie. A good counterexample is any given line in Predator. “Stick around.” “I ain’t got time to bleed.” – all are funny because they work within the context and the characters. Invasion USA is so off-the-wall goofy and unbelievably surreal that no one-liner seems to work, but what can you cleverly say about Russians blowing up a subdivision with a bazooka in the full-blown Christmas season, where even a ceramic Satna gets it and gets it hard? Nothing, really. No one-liner can top that.
The finale involves Norris stalking Rostov in a large building before blowing him away with a bazooka too. The national guard shows up and there’s another large gun fight, which is surprisingly boring and too long-winded.
In short, Invasion USA is what the third season of Stranger Things tried to be without the benefit of Chuck Norris. It’s not the most intelligent movie, nor the most coherent, but it’s rollickingly entertaining. It doesn’t hold back from mere considerations of taste and plausibility and just runs with the most insane crap as if it’s cinematic gold, and you have to love its brazen, masculine naiveté. It’s worth watching at least once, just to experience for yourself.
I give it four stars.
Invasion USA is the quintessential 80 Chuck Norris movie, made at the height of the Golan Globus days when America was badass and Russa was evil. It embraces and gets away with things modern cancel culture would not allow to exist even as a Platonic idea.
The movie is about a small army of insurrectionist Communists, composed of Russian elites and Cuban revolutionaries, who storm Miami to take over America one shopping mall at a time. The main villain is man named Rostov, who has a past with Norris and looks like a shriveled corpse. He’s completely ruthless, killing a drug dealer by popping him in the dick for no reason, smashing a hooker’s face down on as she snorts cocaine with straw going up her nose, then throws her out the window. He’s not the sort of single-minded, uncompromising villain with a political ideal, but rather just an asshole.
Norris plays a former CIA operative, of course in sunny retirement an only trying to enjoy life with his friend and armadillo. But then Rostov and his gang show up on airboats – but wait, there’s more! – and blow the hell out of Norris’s home and kill his friend. Now that’s some major damage! This pisses Norris off and convinces him to fight Rostov with all the personal rage of a karate-weapons-demolition master in his prime.
Most of the movie involves shootouts – the best and most entertaining happening in a mall, with Christmas decorations and little kids everywhere. Rostov blows up an entire neighborhood with a bazooka from the back of an SUV. It’s really fun describing this movie in the simplest terms because you just know that’s how the script was written.
Another scene involves a school bus the guerillas put a bomb on, which Norris simply takes off and puts right back on their car.
Norris has some pretty nonsensical lines – “I’m going to hit you with so many rights you’re going to beg for a left” – that sound exactly what a writer would come up with given the events in this movie. A good counterexample is any given line in Predator. “Stick around.” “I ain’t got time to bleed.” – all are funny because they work within the context and the characters. Invasion USA is so off-the-wall goofy and unbelievably surreal that no one-liner seems to work, but what can you cleverly say about Russians blowing up a subdivision with a bazooka in the full-blown Christmas season, where even a ceramic Satna gets it and gets it hard? Nothing, really. No one-liner can top that.
The finale involves Norris stalking Rostov in a large building before blowing him away with a bazooka too. The national guard shows up and there’s another large gun fight, which is surprisingly boring and too long-winded.
In short, Invasion USA is what the third season of Stranger Things tried to be without the benefit of Chuck Norris. It’s not the most intelligent movie, nor the most coherent, but it’s rollickingly entertaining. It doesn’t hold back from mere considerations of taste and plausibility and just runs with the most insane crap as if it’s cinematic gold, and you have to love its brazen, masculine naiveté. It’s worth watching at least once, just to experience for yourself.
I give it four stars.