When one takes a moment out of his or her busy schedule to ponder the many men and women who have portrayed stereotypical truck drivers on the big screen, the grinning face of karate master Chuck Norris isn't something that normally passes before the mind's eye. In fact, I had absolutely no idea that my tenth favorite action icon had ever situated his spin-kicking rump inside the smelly cab of a snazzy cargo-hauling, diesel-powered big rig until just recently. When a co-worker gleefully suggested I immediately investigate the film in question, I promptly procured a slightly-worn VHS copy and parked my pathetic posterior precisely in front of my persnickety television set.
Breaker! Breaker! is without a doubt my all-time favorite Chuck Norris movie, far surpassing both Invasion USA and Code of Silence in terms of pure, unadulterated cheesy action mayhem. It's the quintessential '70s American martial arts picture, a painfully shallow excuse to throw 90 minutes worth of spin-kicking, third eye-concentrating nonsense at your already faltering senses. The story is about as structurally sound as a cardboard outhouse in tropical storm, of course, though I doubt this will matter much to the sort of cinematic freaks who will flock to this incredibly underrated Norris masterpiece.
Sporting a shiny upper lip and a surprisingly genuine demeanor, Chuck Norris literally set my house ablaze with his staggering turn as John David "JD" Dawes, an arm-wrasslin', truck-drivin', brother-lovin' sum-bitch who won't hesitate to kick you and your whole family through multiple shoddy pinewood walls if you so much as look at him the wrong way. If that meaty slice of information wasn't enough to melt the cotton bloomers off your near-sighted great-grandmother, JD is also a kind, gentle soul who wants nothing more than to teach the world how to discover the inner strength gained from proper daily meditation.
Unfortunately for world peace, things take a brutal turn for the worse when our hero's baby brother mindlessly pilots his truck into Texas City, California, a tiny podunk town governed by the cruel and unusual Judge Trimmings. Once John David receives word that his sibling is up to his skinny little neck in slack-jawed redneck trouble, he hops into his pimped out eagle van with one thing on his mind: Dispense an unprecedented amount of karate justice to the opportunistic hillbilly pot scrubbers who have wrongfully kidnapped his brother. Can JD completely destroy this worthless town and bed the local female rebel before time runs out? You know he will, girlfriend.
Even if you dismiss Breaker! Breaker! as a simple late-'70s oddity, you can't deny the power of its underlying message. I can assure you that every single person who shops at Wal-Mart within these thrifty fifty United States takes their frozen food products for granted, never stopping to think about the inherent risks involved when shipping these chilly items across the country. Breaker! Breaker!, besides providing lots of giddy karate mischief at wholesale prices, gives you an in-depth look at the dangers generally associated with the TV dinner industry. Those "tasty " nuggets of processed meat and vegetables don't just magically appear overnight in your grocer's freezers, dear readers. It takes a virtual squadron of brave men and women to deliver these treats to your greedy overworked stomach juices.
.jpg?t=20130517094513)
Article comments