Breaker! Breaker!
Made in the heady days of movies likeConvoyandSmokey and the Bandit, when CB radios were expected to create the kind of communication network the Internet has provided,Breaker! Breaker!tells the tale of J.D. Dawes (Chuck Norris ofGood Guys Wear Blackand TV'sWalker, Texas Ranger), a trucker in tight jeans and a blonde shag. While J.D. is defending his arm-wrestling reputation in a truck stop poolroom, his younger brother Billy is being taken advantage of by the crooked cops of Texas City, California, a former ghost town turned would-be tourist trap, run by a corrupt judge named Joshua Trimmings. When the scam gets out of hand, Billy disappears--and J.D. comes to town to find him. There are many campy things to appreciate aboutBreaker! Breaker!(the sequined collar of the shirt Norris wears during a meditation teaching, or the glorious air-brushed eagle on Norris's van), and by contemporary Jackie Chan/The Matrixstandards the fighting is slow and unspectacular--but ironically, this actually gives the action some grit and makes the blows feel more visceral than the wild flips and kicks of more recent movies. The chase scenes have surprising momentum, and there's some fine scenery-chewing by George Murdock as the wicked judge. And for a curious bit of trivia, Jack Nance--who must have been playing the lead in David Lynch'sEraserheadconcurrent withBreaker! Breaker!--plays a trucker friend of Norris's.--Bret Fetzer