Breaker! Breaker!

• Directed by Don Hulette
• May 6, 1977 (US) / May 15, 1978 (Germany) / December 19, 1980 (Denmark)

A truck driver searches for his brother who disappeared in a town run by a corrupt judge.

Chuck Norris as a trucker? That is what his character J.D. Dawes does for a living in Breaker! Breaker! That and he knows karate along with the appearance of having a side gig teaching people. Sure. I’ll buy it to get me through a movie.

It relies on something I recall from any number of action shows or movies made in the 70s and 80s and that is a very controlled, corrupt authoritarian town. Sadly it lacks much of the cheesy fun of some those offerings despite the presence of Norris.

Problems begin when J.D. lets his younger brother Billy (Michael Augenstein) take a rig while cautioning him to avoid Texas City. Seems it is a place that relies on questionable tickets to make a buck. Not that far off from some stories in real life.

On the surface Texas was founded by Judge Joshua Trimmings (George Murdock) and friends to be a religiously oriented community. The town he founded in realty runs illegal moonshine ‘cause drugs hadn’t yet become vogue for criminal enterprises in movies yet. They make additional money using a side hustle built around confusing laws and corrupt enforcement to back up questionable charges.

Murdock was one of the great character actors with a career largely in television though not totally without appearances in movies. He was ‘God’ in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. His gravelly voice and craggy features often had him cast, like here, as judges or general authority figures. His Trimmings has a big enough personality to feel like an equal to the physically superior Norris.

Sadly Norris is not nearly as much of a super fighter as he is in other, later films. He is good but not unstoppable. This is weird because Trimming’s henchmen are some barely capable rednecks yet able to beat up the hero. Dawes has a rather inconsequential romance with a local waitress named Arlene (Terry O’Connor) who provides him with nothing more than lovin’. Not even info beyond the obvious.

On the one hand it’s a very high-stakes story for J.D. On the other the villains are laughably bad. They border on being something from the 60s Batman series than they do from any action thriller of any type. The climax is not derived from J.D. kicking butt to success. Some of that does occur, but the enemy is largely defeated because of a CB call out to truckers in the area who come to his aid because he’s just that awesome and ram their vehicles through anything and everything in the town with no concern to damage to their machinery. They’re not just taking out store fronts. They’re taking out entire buildings in an effort to level the town.

If he had interacted with more truckers than the guy on the CB, whose name escapes me, the truckers coming to his aid and stopping it might’ve been a very good climax. Or at least a satisfying one. We don’t see enough of any truckers to get a real connection to it. I would have taken a few phone calls and contacting buddies who might know this or that to make it more of a reason for those guys to come in and help. Another trucker that disappeared beyond the brother. Dark rumors beyond just the locals being jerks.

Breaker! Breaker! is kind of bland all around. Very safe for the time. Almost sterile to the point it could’ve been presented on a T as a TV movie of the week rather than a theatrical film. I really wanted to like this. I wanted the cheesy 70s fun that should’ve come from a movie like this. I was kind of bored if not downright indifferent to the whole project. Chuck Norris didn’t make me cheer for his character and the villain despite being played by a very capable character actor wasn’t evil enough. He was more irritated that his authority has been questioned than he had a personal vendetta against Dawes.

Maybe that’s part of the problem: characters could’ve just walked away mostly. Trimmings could’ve kept his town if he just released the boy or just left Dawes alone. J.D. would’ve had a mystery he couldn’t solve. Nothing ever comes to head because there’s no other option. The final clash is because the credits were coming.

Breaker! Breaker! was entertaining, but not very entertaining. I couldn’t take the bad guy seriously enough and a climax without any actual faces to add beyond Chuck Norris didn’t matter to me. It’s okay but nothing I would not revisit.