Break, 1-9. 10-5 on the things you learned, comeback.

[Darth Geek]

I learned that Chuck Norris' badassness seems to come entirely from his mustache. Because he isn't very impressive here. Granted, part of that is the shear inpompetance of the bad guys (typical with a movie like this), but the fights aren't very good here, and he doesn't even get to ultimately deal with the main bad guy. Just a very stilted fight with a side character that wasn't even shown to be a good fighter earlier in the movie.

[losingmydignity]

I learned that inappropriate touching is rife among truckers, especially between brothers.

[The Snape]

That when a trucker gets a garbled cb radio message suggesting a wrong may have been done he just damn near destroys the entire town... that's just the code of the road brother!! yeeeeehaa!

[Thrifty]

I learned that Strode is a popular man and hard to find.

I learned that Chuck Norris is a horse.

[aaronbaugher]

I learned that this forum exists, several years too late to get in on some great conversations. Oh well, at least now I know.

If nobody was in the car being crushed, why the big "NOOOO!"?

My interpretation was that the bad guy pretended the kid was in the car to get Chuck to do what he did: run over there with his back turned. But I'm just guessing, because there was nothing to establish that the bad guy (or any of them) had that kind of cunning.

[suedenim]

Just watched this on Amazon Prime, and:

I learned a surprising lesson! Jumping head-first through a plate glass window can cause serious injury!

When Chuck's brother jumps through the courthouse window to get away from the corrupt cops, he's actually seriously messed up, with lots of cuts on his face and body, and can't effectively fight or run away from the bad guys.  Admittedly, he would have been recaptured with or without the window injuries, but it was surprising to see such a common action movie obstacle treated in a fairly realistic manner.

I learned that this forum exists, several years too late to get in on some great conversations. Oh well, at least now I know.

If nobody was in the car being crushed, why the big "NOOOO!"?

My interpretation was that the bad guy pretended the kid was in the car to get Chuck to do what he did: run over there with his back turned. But I'm just guessing, because there was nothing to establish that the bad guy (or any of them) had that kind of cunning.

I think you're right, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they made a late change to the movie to have the brother live.  The discovery of the brother in the bard seems weirdly edited, and Chuck just leaves him to go about his revenging business, which seems a little strange as there's no way to be sure more bad guys won't come back there.

The movie was rated PG, but my working hypothesis is that originally the brother received more violent beatings that were then followed by a '70s style violent murder... one that the MPAA decided warranted an R rating.  But the producers wanted the wider audience a PG would potentially give them, so they cut the murder and clumsily inserted a scene to show that the brother was OK.

This would also help explain the weird bit where one of the bad guys beats up the brother some more for no particular reason, when you'd think they have bigger problems (Chuck and a bunch of truckers on a rampage.)  Also, keeping the brother alive doesn't make any sense, or at least doesn't line up with the rest of the script.  If you're keeping him alive, the only sensible reason would be to gain some sort of leverage over Chuck Norris.  Threaten to kill him, try to ransom him, whatever.

A further hypothesis: Originally, his brother was in the car... but he had been killed several hours or days earlier.  This also would explain Chuck killing the car crusher guy (he's generally content to just beat the bad guys up, but now it's personal, etc. etc.)