Carpenter once said "the 80s never ended", and his oeuvre in general and this film in particular are a striking example of why that is. Although this predates the Reagan presidency by five years, it's hot on the heels of his governorship and very directly reacting to the same social forces that brought Reagan to power: gang violence as organized-but-uncharistmatic crime, the dissolution of the suburban ideal, the conflation of the communist bloc with internal challenges to the status quo (see how directly the gang leaders' outfits recall Che Guevara!).
The aesthetic and political focus on the 1980s USA orbits these concerns, and Reagan's articulation of them and vision to address them specifically. Even the counterculture to which Carpenter indisputably belongs is fundamentally reactionary, with principled leftism eviscerated by J. Edgar Hoover and the western PR front, leaving only liberal anger to fill the gap left by the absence of theory and analysis. This liberalism permeates Carpenter's work, and it's already on clear display here in his second film. All critique of the system of policing that's almost made by the circumstances of Wilson's and Wells's incarceration is totally overshadowed by Bishop's role as the "good cop". In turn, the humanization of Wilson and Wells is relies upon to excuse the representation of the gang as a faceless, goalless, mob who are as intrinsically evil as they are devious.
The 80s never ended because American culture—or at least the slice of it that Carpenter sees and participates in—can't muster up a real answer to Reagan or to the anxieties to which he gave voice. Films like this have no power to challenge that because they fundamentally agree with those anxieties, even if they rail against the specific ways they're introduced. You cannot tear down Reagan or his legacy until you stand with the people willing to put their lives on the line to tear down Precinct 13.
