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The Delta Force

The Delta Force

List Price: $14.95
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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Godawful Reagan-Era Right-Wing Camp
Review: Did the reviewers below never see an action movie before "Delta Force" and had nothing else to compare it to? It's not only a terrible action movie, it's one of the worst movies ever made. Equal parts ham and cheese, the first half revolves around the hostage takeover of a plane full of has-been actors left over from all the "Airport" sequels: George Kennedy, Lainie Kazan, Joey Bishop, Robert Vaughn and, unforgettably, Shelley Winters (in one of the most embarrassing performances ever put on film) all try to outdo one another in ham-o-rama melodramatics. The cheesy second half is a lamebrained commando raid, with Norris and Marvin rescuing the cast from Beirut. Was there no one around to rescue them from this movie? Completely inept, "Delta Force" is a "patriotic" Reagan-era daydream of American moral superiority married to right-wing xenophobia; it's one of those movies where the military is depicted as Our Only Hope In a World Gone Mad. Watch this only if you need a good laugh and don't mind watching once-respected actors make fools of themselves.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good Movie That gets your heart pumping
Review: This movie makes you feal really good after watching it for some reason it shows the pride that America Has..

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fantastic for its action and excitement
Review: The casting in this movie could not have been better. Even the most minor of roles were played by solid actors. Non-stop action with good character development.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good in it's day, inappropriot now
Review: "Delta Force" stars Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin as senior officers of the Army's special forces group. They are called into action when an American commercial airliner is hi-jacked by Middle Eastern terrorists. "Delta Force" has spawned many sequals over the years, but this is by far the best. That is not, however, saying a lot. After recent events in America, this movie looks extreamly racist by depicting all Arabs as complicient in terrorism. I know that it was a completly different time when it was made, but you still can't ever forget current events. Taken as an action movie, it isn't bad, a lot of testosterone being splashed around, but that was a big thing in the 80s. The action scenes were very good, the best part of the movie. It looks like to me it was cast with two different movies in mind. The two tough guy leads (who work very well with and off each other) are Chuck Norris (who is actually at his best 'Norrisian' acting, just a notch above, say, David Hassolhoff, though not as bad as he would become on "Walker, Texas Ranger"), Lee Marvin (basiclly re doing his role from "The Dirty Dozen", but otherwise pretty spry for 80. Won't the Army let him retire?), and Bo Svenson (Svenson, well, you know what you're getting, at least he dosn't have that huge baseball bat this time) who are, for better or worse, action stars. And then you have the almost laughable cast of Goerge Kennedy (actually not too bad this time around, reminding me he was really good in "Cool Hand Luke") and Shelly Winters (guess they ignored the plane's weight limit) who are most known for their disaster movies. I wasn't sure if the Army was going to rescue them, or if a granade was going to go off while the plane was in flight. Anyway, this movie really suffers from post 9/11 American attitudes towards Middle Easterns right now, I think too many people are going to think that the cardboard villians are acurate portreyments of Arabs.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good in it's day, inappropriot now
Review: "Delta Force" stars Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin as senior officers of the Army's special forces group. They are called into action when an American commercial airliner is hi-jacked by Middle Eastern terrorists. "Delta Force" has spawned many sequals over the years, but this is by far the best. That is not, however, saying a lot. After recent events in America, this movie looks extreamly racist by depicting all Arabs as complicient in terrorism. I know that it was a completly different time when it was made, but you still can't ever forget current events. Taken as an action movie, it isn't bad, a lot of testosterone being splashed around, but that was a big thing in the 80s. The action scenes were very good, the best part of the movie. It looks like to me it was cast with two different movies in mind. The two tough guy leads (who work very well with and off each other) are Chuck Norris (who is actually at his best 'Norrisian' acting, just a notch above, say, David Hassolhoff, though not as bad as he would become on "Walker, Texas Ranger"), Lee Marvin (basiclly re doing his role from "The Dirty Dozen", but otherwise pretty spry for 80. Won't the Army let him retire?), and Bo Svenson (Svenson, well, you know what you're getting, at least he dosn't have that huge baseball bat this time) who are, for better or worse, action stars. And then you have the almost laughable cast of Goerge Kennedy (actually not too bad this time around, reminding me he was really good in "Cool Hand Luke") and Shelly Winters (guess they ignored the plane's weight limit) who are most known for their disaster movies. I wasn't sure if the Army was going to rescue them, or if a granade was going to go off while the plane was in flight. Anyway, this movie really suffers from post 9/11 American attitudes towards Middle Easterns right now, I think too many people are going to think that the cardboard villians are acurate portreyments of Arabs.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fact, fantasy, and exploitation combine.
Review: This 1986 offering from The Cannon Group recreates an actual hijacking and then sends a fictional delta force team (headed by Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris) out to fix things. Studio head Menahem Golan stepped behind the camera to direct and the result is a bit of a bloated movie. The action is well over an hour in coming and the first half is pretty over the top in its melodramatic manipulation. Nonetheless, it will entertain fans of the Cannon studio movies (they do exist) and Chuck Norris. Nothing classic, and it lacks the punch of realism (the delta force drives dune buggies into combat?) to help make anything other than an average exploitation melodrama.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: 80's Patriotism with a shot of Adrenaline
Review: The Delta Force today is a funny as Hell. The excruiatingly cheesy 80's patriotism is oozing from every poor and the bad guys are men you hate with little depth.

The story here is that Iranian Terrorist have hijacked a US aircraft enroute to rome. The airplane is full of US Citizens. Once they discover that there are Jews on Board they take them to FIrst class (males only) and when they arrive totheir destination takes them to their HQ. The only men who can stop them are Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin with their elite team the Delta force. From there a lot of stuff gets blown up and countless bad guys die like the cattle fodder they are. All Ending with a motorcycle Chasing Airplane sequence.

If you want a Retro patriotic 80's film than this is the way to go.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Funny
Review: Wow. I recently watched this one on cable recently, and must applaud the elements that make it a tremendous bad movie. One is the direction and production itself from that powerhouse duo--Golan/Globus. These guys have an amazing resume of 80s action films--they banged out about a dozen flicks a year during their prime. You'll be hard pressed to find filmmakers who more consistently made crowd pleasers by preying on paranoia (be it Russians invading, Arabs, 'Nam, street gangs taking over, or some other injustice), glorifying violence, giving us the revenge we crave, all the while casting credibility, writing, and acting to wind in favor of R-rated A-Team-esque violence.

If they ever make a War on Terror box set, The Delta Force would be a prime offering. This is a very curious cultural artifact from that genre of 80s action films that has disappeared. I'm betting the current administration owns a copy of this.

Where to begin? The story is about terrorism and the crack anti-terrorist group, Delta Force. Palestinian terrorists (note that Golan and Globus are Israeli) hijack a plane (taking advantage of that old standard in lax airport safety--Athens, Greece) and re-route it to favorite 80s locale Beirut. It's up to the Delta Force to stop them.

The cast? Brilliant. How many times will you find a movie with Lee Marvin, Chuck Norris (alumnus of numerous Golan/Globus outings), Joey Bishop(!), Steve James, and a variety of faceless actors playing sweaty and fanatical Arab terrorists who like to swear on Allah when being questioned? Also note Martin Balsam, who, a year previously, appeared in Golan/Globus' greatest contribution to mankind: Death Wish 3.

The early portions of the hijacking all recall the famous TWA hijacking of the previous year, and they play out decently in an attempt to echo reality, all so reality can be ripped up and thrown away later on.

What's really jaw-dropping is the ending. I first saw this film as a child, and then it seemed like the solid 80s action fair I expected, with heinous bad guys, bad-ass good guys, plenty of violence, and the bad guys getting theirs, but good. Upon recent viewing, whole new angles opened up. The final assault on the terrorists and the plane is stupefying. Norris drives a motorcycle straight from GI Joe, complete with nifty, sharp rockets in the front (that mysteriously reappear after being fired), tiny but eerily accurate machine guns, and some kind of rear-end firing grenade launchers that symbolize a metaphorical flatulence as Norris destroys the baddies with his back turned. Nice. The faintly pleasant and incredibly cheesy, heroic music pipes in at the end as low paid extras who refused to cut their hair for the film play Delta Force commandos who favor black knit ski caps in the heat of Beirut and issue orders like "C'mon, let's go!"

The oeuvre of Golan/Globus is begging for a critical re-examination, and arguably a boxed set. Hunker down with gems like this, Invasion U.S.A, Death 3(and 2 and 4) and Cobra, and watch in awe. The marriage of profit and cheap gratification is perhaps unmatched in the history of cinema.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not Always Believable, But I've Seen Far Worse
Review: It's been nearly eighteen years since THE DELTA FORCE was first unleashed, back in early 1986. Time has actually been good to this shoot-'em-up which, while it often seems like another standard issue good guys/bad guys action flick set against the fictional recreation of an actual 1985 TWA hijacking, actually manages to be quite tense and suspenseful much of the time.

Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin head up the elite Delta Force (which is an actual counterterrorist unit, though it has never been used in reality) as it is put into action following the hijacking of an American Travelways flight out of Athens, Greece. Onboard this plane, the hijackers, led by Robert Forster (a chilling performance from him here), demand the release of Palestinean political prisoners or they will blow the plane up. To ram home their point, they separate all the Jews onboard from the rest of the passengers and, when the Delta Force fails to nab them in Algiers, kill a U.S. marine (as actually happened in the '85 skyjacking).

But Norris and Marvin are not far behind. Although the film does become something of a conventional shoot-'em-up in its final forty minutes, THE DELTA FORCE turns out to be far better than most films of its ilk.

Complete with an all-star cast that includes Joey Bishop, Martin Balsam, George Kennedy, Susan Strasberg, and Shelley Winters, one is reminded to some extent of the all-star disaster films that were so successful during the 70s. But instead of being an encumbrance, this kind of casting actually keeps THE DELTA FORCE from degenerating completely into a comic-book bloodbath. Bo Svenson also gives a good performance as the ATW pilot. And Norris proved himself here to be a far better actor in such films than Schwarzenneger, Stallone, or Seagal could ever have dreamed of being.

But what really keeps the film on track is the presence of Marvin, THE veteran tough guy in Hollywood, who was making his last big-screen appearance here. His gaunt weariness and tough professionalism displayed here, as they were in films like THE DIRTY DOZEN, POINT BLANK, and BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, are what made him a Hollywood legend in every sense of the word.

It's these things that make THE DELTA FORCE eminently watchable, even in this post-9/11 world. It's not always believable, but I've seen far worse.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: As American As Apple Pie
Review: Who do you call when arab terrorists(led by the white Robert Forster) hijack a plane and threaten the American way of life? You call the Delta Force, coz they'll make mincemeat out of those heathen hijackers! Yes, those saints at Cannon give us one of the most butt kickin', finger lickin', chicken pickin' action flickins of the 80s. The first half of the film is actually quite well done and suspenseful as we watch the events unfold on the hijacked airplane. After the plane lands and the Delta Force makes it's move, we're thrown headfirst into CannonLand, where the blood and carnage flow like wine. Chuck Norris is his invincible self, taking out whoever gets in his path with guns, fists and a motorcycle equipped with a built in machine gun(a Cannon favorite coz this ridiculous contraption pops up in other Cannon films). Lee Marvin kinda hangs back and directs the rescue, but soon becomes quite the butt kicker himself. If you missed it the first time around(which is impossible if you have TNT), it's not too late! Keep the bad action movie alive.


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