This theme always makes me think about what makes an ’80s movie so 1980s? There are lots of ways you could answer that from certain visual styles, to the excessive use of those lightning bolt effects. There are themes and motifs films from the 1980s reflected on regularly, and genres that elevated the box office (think slashers and action flicks).

You could turn on your TV right now and find a movie already in progress that you’ve never seen before and determine pretty quickly that it was made in the 1980s.

Certainly, if the film you put on was Black Moon Rising and you saw this car roll across the screen, you’d know you were watching an ’80s movie.

And if there were any doubts after that, once you caught wind of Linda Hamilton’s hair, you would know with absolute certainty.

The film itself is a great big pile of 1980s cheese. Tommy Lee Jones plays Sam Quint a thief turned FBI subcontractor hired to steal a computer disk containing damning information about some big Las Vegas corporation. He easily steals the disk, but when he’s chased down by some goons, he slips it behind the tag of that totally awesome car pictured above.

That car is a prototype made by some super-smart nerds, and it can travel up to 350 MPH and runs on water. Before Sam can get his disk back, a thief named Nina (Linda Hamilton) steals the car.

Actually, she steals a lot of cars. She’s part of a car-stealing ring that is so bold they show up at a fancy restaurant, lock all the doors then drive away with a couple of dozen cars at a time. The ring is run by Ed Ryland (Robert Vaughn), who is so bold that he’s building two massive high-rises to run his car-stealing operation out of.

Naturally, Sam has to break into the well-secured high rises and steal the car back. Naturally, he romances Nina in the process.

It is all very silly and rather dumb, but Tommy Lee Jones makes it worth the watching. He could elevate even the stupidest material. I’d watch him in anything. The car is pretty fun too.