Written by Old Bluffer 7th Nov 2007

The other evening I was channel surfing and spotted a film called "Dudesons The Movie". The programme guide described this film as containing "The hilarious antics of the Dudesons as they engage in adventures with their beloved pet pig". This seemed slightly out of sorts with the action onscreen though, which was Chuck Norris gunning down some nameless thugs.

I carried on watching for long enough to establish that it was unlikely that any beloved pigs were about to make an appearance, and actually my channel guide was on the fritz. By this time it was too late though, I was sucked into the appalling spectacle of a low budget Chuck Norris movie.

I have to admit here that I'm not really a Chuck connoisseur - but I'd seen the amusing Internet jokes that get e-mailed round ("There is no chin under Chuck Norris' Beard. There is only another fist" etc etc x 1000), so I was curious to see how ridiculously hard he was going to be.

It seems I'd joined this film towards the end, so I have no idea what the hell it was all about, although I'd be willing to speculate that America is under some sort of attack given the title. I can only review this based on what I saw though, which was a bunch of fairly ill equipped gang members under siege by a large force of the US Army, who have infinite weaponry and several large tanks. During the twenty minutes or so that was left, these two groups fired about five million shots at each other, with neither side showing a clear advantage. A few gang members got shot, and the tanks kept blowing up an ambulance (well, a white van painted up like one). For some reason though, the gang members kept repairing the ambulance, as the same one gets blown up about ten times, but shown from different angles.

While all this is going on, Chuck has bypassed the pointless gun battle, and is stalking the clear villain of the piece, Rostov. I know he was called Rostov as pretty much the only dialogue at all is Chuck shouting "Rostov!" every now and again.

Before he can meet him, there are the inevitable goons to kill, which he achieves with negative charisma and style. This suits the locale well, as all we see are bland doors and office desks, and the filmmakers don't even bother to move scenery around so it is incredibly obvious that these are the same bland doors and desks, even though everyone is supposedly moving around.

Anyway, Chuck surprises Rostov using no visible skills whatsoever, and they fight - well, Chuck does anyway, if you can call it that. What we see is Chuck performing some lethargic kicks which send Rostov backwards over some desks. Then, for absolutely no reason other than to extend the film for another seven minutes, Chuck wanders off so that Rostov can pick himself up and find a huge bazooka.

This means we have to endure Rostov walking round the incredibly aesthetically boring building again, looking for Chuck, until he comes to a corridor with a blank wall in front of him. Chuck then appears with some kind of rocket grenade launcher thing and fires before Rostov can react. We then see Rostov getting blasted out of a window, which I swear wasn't in the corridor a few seconds previously (maybe the same gang members who kept repairing the ambulance shimmed up the wall and did some speedy building improvements?).

Old Bluffer's Thoughts on the film

The thing that struck me most about the twenty minutes of pure Chuck action that I saw, was the sheer cheapness of the production - and this is from someone who quite happily buys DVDs like "The Warrior and the Sorceress". I'm not just talking about understandable budgetry constraints like reusing footage of exploding ambulances either - in Invasion USA they couldn't even afford to get the cameraman a tripod that has a "pan" feature! Seriously, lots of shots are just static, and you have to wait for someone to approach the screen from the right and then depart again from the left - it's like going back to the days of a John Wayne western where they just stuck the camera on a convenient rock and started shooting an entire film.

The other thing I thought was how lacklustre Chuck's performance was. Seagal had his knife fighting and aikido, Van Damme had his ridiculous "splits" move and kickboxing, Arnie had a silly voice and brawny physique and Chuck Norris had... well, a beard, some slow karate and zero personality.

...and after this minor epiphany I suddenly realised that, crap as he is, that is actually part of his great comic appeal, and I'd happily watch him again in an equally rubbish film. So I look forwards to my next Chuck feature - shame about the pig though...



[Apologies, I added the above review without realising that two people had already submitted one, normally I check... So, here are their reviews:]

Bonus Review #1, written by The Doctor

Rostov is a Russian operative who, with a large army landing in Florida, hopes to do the one thing that could never be done in over 200 years... INVADE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. With his men inciting race riots while dressed as Miami policemen, firing on suburban houses with a rocket launcher, and bombing malls, coupled with Rostov's obsession with shooting people in the crotch, hopes to get martial law declared, and thus he can move in.

However, there is one man who can take on Rostov: Matt Hunter, ex-CIA. A one-man twin Uzi-toting, badasss $x$ truck-driving army. He's also the only one who has had numerous encounters with the madman, and he is the one thing Rostov fears (he is literally the subject of numerous nightmares for Rostov in which he is killed at Hunter's hands).

Re-activated to stop Rostov, he winds up confronting him in an office building after the remaining soldiers surrender to the U.S. Army. Rostov has his rocket launcher, and is very nervous as he searches for Hunter. Unfortunately for Rostov, Hunter gets the drop on him... and he's armed with a LAW rocket launcher.

"It's time..." Matt says, echoing a line he says in Rostov's dream ("It's time to die."). With a long snarl, Rostov turns around to fire on Matt, but Matt is quicker, and fires.

Rostov bursts into a bloody bits as the rocket explodes, sending the parts raining down to the ground below. An exhuasted Hunter throws the empty launcher down, the frame freezes, and the end credits roll with the rousing Jay Chattaway score.

Bonus Review #2, written by The Boy

Chuck Norris stars as Matt Hunter, a retired CIA agent who lives in the Florida. Hunter is forced to come out of retirement, when Mikhail (convenient name for 1985) Rostov, played by Richard Lynch, leads a communist invasion within Miami.

Doing his best impersonation of Chris Cringle, Rostov spearheads the invasion on Christmas, of all days, with an army of soldiers ordered to wreak havoc on anything red, white or blue! In doing so, Rostov and the boys destroy a church in the process. Rostov even attempts to blow up a school bus full of children. Needless to say, Chuck Norris has no love loss for this commie b*stard.

The death scene I'm referring to comes at the film's conclusion. Norris and Lynch are all alone in an office building that has seen better days.
They lead one another on a game of cat and mouse shooting at each other with various machine guns. Ultimately, they each run out of ammunition (I thought that never happened to Chuck Norris?). Both men eventually come across bazookas of their own and continue to stalk each other throughout the building.

Lynch has his bazooka cocked on hoisted on his shoulder. He enters an abandoned hallway. Directly behind Lynch appears Chuck Norris out of nowhere with bazooka in hand. Norris pulls open the bazooka and is ready to fire. There is a long pause and Lynch, with his back to Norris, is in frozen in shock. Norris then utters the greatest one liner I've ever heard..."It's time." [It's not really *that* great - OB]
Lynch quickly spins around giving out a yell that would make Boris Karloff proud, but before he can react, Chuck Norris...merely 6 feet away, shoots Lynch with a bazooka missile head-on, sending Lynch straight out the office building window into a million pieces.

Chuck never moves from his original stance in the hallway and is unfazed by the enormous explosion.

A bazooka into a crowded building is one thing, but to use it in a one-on-one duel is something very special. That's taking the relationship between two people beyond hate.

It's also something Hamilton sure could have used on Burr.