Though never quite a movie star, the personable Treat Williams carved out a niche as a B-movie action hero and does a manful job of energizing this cliched nuclear-threat picture. International right-wing terrorist Sampson (Udo Kier) takes his act to US soil and leads home-grown militia men on a raid of Cyberdyne Systems' headquarters. Meanwhile, at an outmoded atomic energy plant, former sheriff Mike Jeffers (Williams), who's now a security guard, gives a tour of the downsized facility to Senator Cook (Andrew Prine), the Senator's public relations person, Janine (Lori Loughlin), and a video crew. While Cook is posing for photo ops, Sampson's brigade storms the decommissioned site and rubs out all the remaining staffers. They attack the Senator's party, but Jeffers whisks Cook and Janine away from danger. Sampson orders his zealots to eliminate the trio, then turns his attention to pressuring his in-house scientific genius, Mr. Breem (Doug McKeon), to pick up the pace and build a nuclear weapon. While Jeffers plays cat and mouse with the survivalists, Sampson places a call to Washington, demanding a jet, the release of political prisoners and the tidy sum of $50,000,000. The idealistic Breem wasn't figuring on either profit or bloodshed when he agreed to piece together a bomb for Sampson. When Washington bureaucrats realize what Sampson's up to, they scramble to contain the threat. Either the cowardly Cook or the vacillating Breem could tip the scale for Jeffers. An expert at playing lunatics, Kier often puts one in mind of the late Klaus Kinski with a sense of humor. The combination of Williams's stoic ingenuity and Kier's hammy performance gives this film more juice than the worn material warrants. --Robert Pardi
