It is a big, silly barrel of fun, with a delirious, tongue-in-cheek script...

The film was was responding to the start of the US rust belt and Reagan-era consumerism, but its themes of working-class subjugation and omnipresent media control have only become more pressing.

Carpenter's primary objective was to make a tough action flick, which he does; it fits snugly into his filmography's subset of urban mayhem movies (alongside 'Escape from New York,' 'Assault on Precinct 13,' and parts of 'Big Trouble in Little China').

Keith David, Roddy Piper and Meg Foster deliver competent performances, and the story's climax is infinitely more satisfying than its sluggish beginning.