The Delta Force

Here's a universal truth for you that just about everyone can agree about. Chuck Norris is in fact, an amazingly bad ass movie star. His movies aren't always that great -- sometimes they're not even good, sometimes they're truly bad -- but through it all, Chuck Norris and all his awesome facts, is one cool dude. I haven't seen many of his movies, but I do my best to catch up with them, like 1986's The Delta Force, loosely based on the true story of real-life 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

Flying out of Cairo with scheduled stops at Athens, Rome and New York City, ATW Flight 282 takes off with 100-plus passengers on-board. Not too long after takeoff, terrorists from the New World Revolutionary Organization led by a man named Abdul (Robert Forster) hijack the plane, starting a chain of events as the plane tries to find a landing site to deal with the terrorists and all their hostages. While the terrorists' demands are up in the air, an elite American special forces out, the Delta Force, led by Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin) and his second-in-command, Major Scott McCoy (Norris), is scrambled to help rescue the hostages. Can the Delta Force get their in time and rescue the hostages in time against nearly insurmountable odds as the terrorists prep to go out in a blaze of glory?

What an odd, weird movie. From director Menahem Golan (who co-wrote the script with James Bruner), 'Delta' was filmed on-location at a new studio in Jerusalem, the GG Israel Studios. The Israeli locations are pretty cool, adding an authentic look and feel to the story. Now with that said, it's a big old mess of a flick with some -- if not enough -- entertaining qualities. It mixes touches of disaster movies, action heavy shoot 'em ups and plenty of patriotic flag-waving, bouncing back and forth among the different angles. It's almost schizophrenic, never finding a rhythm. We go from on-board hostages to diplomatic and government situations, airport to Delta Force, hostages to terrorists. I felt like key parts of the story that explain what went on are completely missing. Title cards try and explain how and when and where, but there seems to be chunks completely cut away. Different segments with no real unifying link.

Instead of that focus on story and character and plot development, 'Delta' rides on one thing; Chuck Norris' awesomeness. That's it. That's all. Unfortunately, he's kept in the background for most of the first hour of the movie.When his McCoy is on-screen, Norris makes the most of it, his experienced Delta Force leader worn down by the horrors of fighting. That said, he sure embraces that whole fighting thing. The last 45 minutes (more on it later) are one scene after another where Norris' McCoy goes all America on some terrorist ass. He jumps off buildings, shoots, punches, and stabs countless terrorists while riding a motorcycle rigged with seemingly infinite rockets and missiles. In another way of showing how cool he is, McCoy typically likes to enter or leave a room by jumping through a window, opening the door for all sorts of badass entrances. Great drama it is not, but in the badass department, 'Delta' succeeds thanks to Norris.

In his last movie before his death a year later in 1987, Marvin is as cool as ever as Col. Alexander, the no-nonsense, smart-ass Delta Force leader, always ready with a quick shot from the hip or a snappy one-liner. Their scenes aren't too long, but Marvin and Norris are an excellent team together. Who else to look for? How about Robert Vaughn as the Delta Force commander back in Washington D.C. Oh, and some of the hostages? George Kennedy, Martin Balsam, Shelley Winters, Joey Bishop, Lainie Kazan, and a young Kim Delaney as a nun with Bo Svenson as the pilot of the hijacked jet airliner. Not a bad cast by any means, just the opposite, but the disjointed story doesn't give most of them a chance to do anything. George Kennedy manages to rise above the story, as do Balsam and Svenson.

If you can make it to the last 45 minutes, you'll be rewarded. It's almost non-stop from there until the final scene, making up for the slowish first 80 minutes and its schizophrenic nature that's all over the freaking place. In general, it's a pretty cheesy 1980s action movie with all sorts of good cliches and stereotypes. The Delta Force theme is unintentionally funny -- nice work from composer Alan Silvestri -- with an almost pleasant, light-hearted feel to it. Listen HERE if curious. You almost expect to be played over a sports movie montage.

Not a bad movie, not necessarily a good movie either, but entertaining enough. Cool cast that isn't used to its potential, but Marvin and Norris make it worthwhile.

The Delta Force (1986): ** 1/2 /****

Missing in Action

Before he was the punchline to countless facts and one-liners about how cool, awesome and badass he was, Chuck Norris was quite the action star in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. We're not talking classic, big budget action flicks, just hard-edged, action-packed B-movies that fans and audiences usually ate up. Are they good? For the most part, not particularly, but Chuck Norris is so cool!!! Here's one of his best, an audience favorite and near cult classic (because it's really dumb), 1984's Missing in Action.

Having spent seven years in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp, Lt. Colonel James Braddock (Norris) still struggles with the traumatic experience. He escaped 10 years ago, but the experience still lingers with him, especially because he believes that even long after the war, Braddock believes there are still many more missing in action American soldiers. The only problem is, he can't convince anyone of his belief. Braddock is finally able to get back into Vietnam, convincing a government investigation team to look out for evidence of other M.I.A. American soldiers. The team is met with a stone wall of doubt and questioning, frustrating Braddock even further. The former Colonel takes things into his own hands, planning an excursion deep into Vietnam where he's found the location of a hidden camp for POWs. Can he somehow pull it off, rescuing the prisoners who have long since been abandoned?

If that plot description sounds familiar, it should. In 1983, a story treatment from director James Cameron made its way around Hollywood and was eventually turned into Rambo: First Blood Part II. The studio that made 'Action,' Cannon Group, claimed to be "inspired" by the treatment and made its own rescuing POW movie. It was actually two movies, this one and a prequel, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning, that were made back-to-back and raced into theaters before Rambo's bloody return in 1985. So is it familiar? Yes, it should be. More than that, there's a whole sub-genre about rescue efforts of Americans in Vietnam, including this one, Rambo, and the first and best of the bunch, 1983's Uncommon Valor. The Vietnam War was unlike any other war America had fought in, and numbers differ about how many soldiers were missing in action or their bodies were never recovered.

It's a natural jumping off point for a story/script, right? Operations and missions into Vietnam to rescue Americans, how can you lose? Uncommon Valor is an action-packed, men on a mission movie with a solid cast. Rambo is mindlessly stupid, Sylvester Stallone a ridiculous one-man killing machine. And then there's this movie. Yeahhhhhhhhhh, I thought Rambo was pretty bad until I saw this movie. The script is the biggest culprit. We get countless scenes of Braddock staring into the distant with a blank stare on his face. We get more scenes of him walking around Vietnam and Thailand. There is no real tension at any point in the story that basically drifts along from dull action scene to dull action scene through the first hour plus. It's very basic. Americans = angelically good. Vietnamese = Satanically evil in sinister ways. All of them. They're all bad. It's so simplistic in its execution that it ceases to be a good bad movie, one you can sit back and revel in. It becomes just bad.

Surely Chuck Norris himself can be a saving grace, can't it? Yeah, that's what I was counting on, but that never comes around. As an action star, Norris is quite capable. He handles much of his own stunts, including one impressive stunt late as he hangs from a ladder on a hovering helicopter, and all his hand-to-hand combat scenes are pretty decent. Maybe it's the character, maybe it's the script, but the character just isn't very interesting. Braddock's tortured past is shown and mentioned, but I never actually felt too interested in him. M. Emmet Walsh gets to ham it up as Tuck, Braddock's old friend who owes him one and uses his boat as a way to get back into Vietnam. David Tress is the U.S. Senator at the head of the investigating team with Lenore Kasdorf as Ann, the Senator's assistant who helps Braddock and gets nude too! The horrific Vietnamese villains are James Hong as General Trau with Ernie Ortega as Vinh, the sadistic prison guard who is now a government official apparently.

So if Chuck Norris can't save the movie, surely the action can, right? Right?!? Once again, it comes up short. 'Action' basically rewrites Action Movie Cliches 101. Braddock can hit anything and everything he aims at. He can be running, walking, crouching, falling, and he's going to drill that bad guy dead center. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese troops -- supposedly trained at some point in firearms -- can't hit one freaking guy! Not once, not even a scratch! The action scenes aren't actually that bad, providing a minor positive in an otherwise pretty lousy story, but the cliches get to be a little much. Even the best scene, Braddock and Tuck on a motorized raft gunboat attacking a Vietnamese column on shore, is undone by the appearance of a Vietnamese patrol boat/gunboat. Oh, and a helicopter! Braddock arranged days before for it to show up at the exact second it's needed! Tuck's assistant guns away at the boat (seemingly not hitting it at all), and then Tuck takes over. There are scenes of seven, eight seconds of these guys blasting away, unedited, just firing. It's riveting to watch, as riveting as it was to write.

Here's a good example. If this scene puts a smile on your face, check the movie out and start drinking (heavily). If it doesn't, this ain't for you. Thinking they've killed Braddock -- silly Vietnamese -- three soldiers stand and show off their most ridiculous, over the top evil laughter, celebrating killing the indestructible American. In slow motion (of course), Braddock pops up out of the water and shoots them to pieces. I thought this movie would have a put of that guilty pleasure charm, a really bad movie that embraces the badness. Mostly, it takes itself too seriously and is one big dull final product.

Missing in Action (1984): */**** 

The Expendables 2

I watched 2010's The Expendables all the while knowing I wasn't watching a good movie. Did I enjoy it? Yes, but it had massive flaws and issues that I was barely....barely....able to look past. Well, either I'm a glutton for punishment or just forgetful because I had to give the sequel, 2012's The Expendables 2, a shot. Rather than repeat and rewrite the original review (and trust me, I could), I'll give this one a shot. It's basically the same movie, but I liked it more.

Having completed a mission to rescue a hostage in Nepal, mercenaries Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), his right-hand man Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), and their crew of specialists return to New Orleans to celebrate a successful mission and prep for their next one. Ross though is approached -- and basically blackmailed -- by Church (Bruce Willis), a mysterious CIA agent who Ross knows well from his past. The mission? Ross and his team must head to Albania and recover something from a downed plane. Now what that object is, Ross isn't told, only that he'll have someone along for the ride, Maggie (Nan Yu), to help accomplish the mission. It seems and sounds like a simple grab and bag job, but deep in enemy territory, anything could happen.

Here we are again. The make or break part of the review. The complaints/compliments I'm going to throw out there now come down to one simple thing; do you like-to-love action movies? If you even remotely like action movies, you should find something enjoyable about this....at least a little. From director Simon West, '2' improves on the formula laid out in the first one (for the most part). Assemble a ridiculous amount of action stars, give them lots of cool one-liners and lots of people to kill/maim/shoot/stab on a ridiculous mission. To its credit, '2' is more self-assured it knows what it's doing. The crazy amounts of action are still there on top of some more humor -- more on that humor later. It's the same more, but I enjoyed this one more than the first shoot 'em up flick.

What was never in question is the casting here. Still chugging along as a believable action star at 66 years old, Stallone is and always will be a badass. His Barney Ross is that requisite tough group leader, burned and warped for years by the death around him and the suicidal life he leads. Statham is once again, a great sidekick. The two bitch and moan at each other, reflecting a partnership that goes back for years. It seems in all his movies Stallone knows what his fans want to see, and he doesn't disappoint. Filling out Ross' team is returnees Jet Li (making basically a cameo), Randy Couture, and Terry Crews. Also returning from the first one and given more of a role is Dolph Lundgren with newcomer Liam Hemsworth joining the team as Billy the Kid, a disillusioned Army sniper. As more and more bigger names join the cast, Couture and Crews are given little to do and left in the background, but Lundgren and Hemsworth both represent themselves well.

Putting these movies together though, Stallone's goal has been to assemble any and all action stars. Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger return as Church and Trench, fellow personalities in the mercenary/espionage underworld, with both stars getting more screen-time and more to do. One of the huge names in action movies in the 1980s and 1990s, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a villain named....Vilain (pretty original, huh?), an Eastern European hired killer with a gang of killers, the Sangs. Not enough? Chuck Norris....yes, CHUCK NORRIS....plays Booker, a loner mercenary content to work by himself but helping out the Expendables as needed. Scott Adkins plays Hector, Vilain's brutal right hand man while Yu holds her own in the testosterone-fueled action pic.

So what stops this ridiculously action-packed movie from being the classic that it wants? As was the case with the first movie, there's just something missing. I can't put my finger on it. In an attempt to craft a story full of action, badass characters and funny one-liners, everything else gets left by the wayside. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Scenes lack any sort of transitions, bouncing from one location to the next without even an establishing shot or two. Oh, the story stalls? Enter Norris, Willis or Schwarzenegger out of nowhere, no explanation provided. The music score is anything but subtle and far from memorable. It's fun from the start, but several reviews point this out. An action movie doesn't have to be HUGE, but some scale certainly helps. Both Expendables movies are missing that scale. At times, it even feels like a straight-to-DVD action flick, and that's never a good comparison for any theatrical release.

More than that though, '2' feels rushed, much like the first film did. It clocks in at 103 minutes, but if you take away a 10-minute credits sequence, it's just 93 minutes long. Deep on story it is not, but in just over an hour and a half, this film covers a lot of ground. Yes, I know an action movie like this isn't going to be Shakespeare, but slow down even just a little. And then there's that script. It just has too many references to previous movies the cast has been in. We get it, Arnold was the Terminator, Bruce was in Die Hard, and Norris was in Lone Wolf McQuade. For goodness sake, there's even a Chuck Norris Fact dropped during his introduction. Humor is one thing, some clever references another, but one after another becomes downright tedious and even annoying.

Now if you're still reading, you must sorta like action movies....kinda, maybe, I could be wrong. The action here is pretty cool, and thankfully, director West doesn't utilize the ultra-schizo technique used in the Bourne movies. For the most part, we see the action. All the cliches/stereotypes are there. We've got small armies of bad guys who can't hit the broad side of a barn, the heroes who can hit every single thing they aim at, and so on and so forth. It's a pretty good movie, just know that it's mindless entertainment at its best, nothing else.    

The Expendables 2 (2012): ***/****

Way of the Dragon

Taken long before his time, Bruce Lee died at age 32 from cerebral edema.  For a man who was only in a handful of movies in his too-short career, Lee is still remembered fondly for his ability both as a martial artist and generally as a performer.  Like any pop culture icon who died young, what is left behind can too often be heavily criticized or over-analyzed.  His movies are prime examples of the incredible skill he had and was able to perfect in such a short time.  The only other Lee movie I've seen was his classic Enter the Dragon (loved it) but thanks to DVD availability switching at Netflix, I was able to watch 1972's Way of the Dragon.

Movies from foreign markets can be completely hit or miss depending on the print of the movie you're watching and the general quality of the film itself. 'Way' is an odd mix of the two with a carefully-shot, enjoyable movie to look at, but the general quality is lacking.  There's not so much a plot as various excuses for Lee to wail on various, nameless thugs.  There's some horrific dubbing, cringe-inducing attempts at humor, and some jumps in geography that I don't think anyone in their right mind could explain.  That said, the movie is worth seeing almost solely for the quality fight scenes.

Dispatched from Hong Kong, kung fu master Ah Lung (Lee) is sent to Rome to help clear up a problem.  His employer is related to the owners of a small restaurant, young and pretty Chen (Nora Miao) and her getting older uncle Wang (Chung-Hsin Huang), that is being harassed by some local low-level mafiosos.  The business is struggling so Ah Lung intervenes, helping teach the staff some karate techniques and ways of defending themselves against the waves of nameless thugs.  Ah Lung though is the key for he has yet to fight anyone on his own level.  That is until the mafiosos decide to pull out all the stops and hire an American karate expert, Colt (Chuck Norris) to come and face off with him, winner take all.

I'll get the criticisms out of the way first before talking about the good portions of the movie.  First off, the story is basically nonexistent.  The movie is an excuse for Lee to ham it up with some out of place comedy in the first 20 or 30 minutes, and then get to business and start kicking some ass.  Characters are never really developed, the precarious situation isn't all that precarious, and it all feels like an excuse to set up more and more elaborate fight sequences.  As for the dubbing, I've seen my fair share of spaghetti westerns where English-speaking actors dubbed over the voices of Italian actors with mixed results.  This one was one of the worst.  Lee's voice just sounds odd and completely takes you out of the movie.  Making it worse, the subtitles were like a cliff note's version of what was actually being said.  The horrifically bad dubbing eventually just wears you down with its badness, making almost every scene with dialogue laughable.

But come on now, this is a Bruce Lee movie and no one signs up for...um, talking...I guess.  The fight scenes are this movie's bread and butter.  It takes too long to get to the fights, but when they do pop up they're worth it.  Lee's ability as a fighter -- even in expertly staged, choreographed sequences -- has rarely been matched on screen.  Watching him fight, you just get that feeling that you're watching a master do what he does best.  The fights have since inspired countless other scenes in countless other movies.  They've got everything from the great stuntwork to the very distinct sound effect of a fist smashing into someone's face.  You know that sound, don't deny it.  Sure, the thugs attack one at a time, rendering their attempts useless, but what kung fu/karate movie doesn't utilize that tactic.  After all, they are just nameless thugs waiting to be punched, kicked or maimed.

The highlight of all this action is the finale with Lee's Ah Lung battling Norris' Colt in the Roman Colosseum.  The build-up to this scene is great -- including using a sample of Ennio Morricone's Once Upon a Time in the West score -- as Ah Lung and Colt circle each other through the Roman ruins waiting for the other one to strike.  The actual fight sequence was filmed on a set somewhere with a backdrop serving as the Colosseum, but even knowing they weren't really there, the sequence is a doozy.  It's just close enough to be the real thing, and the one-on-one fight is so well-handled you don't even notice.  The entire sequence from beginning to end is nearly 15 minutes long (watch some HERE) and is by far the best thing going for the movie.  As for that geographical misstep, Lee chases a bad guy into the Colosseum from an Italian villa.  Now I've never been to Rome, but I could have sworn the ruins were in downtown Rome.  Ah, no big deal, it works here even if it makes no sense at all.  And also, don't watch the ending if you're a fan of any of the many Chuck Norris-isms.  You'll be sorely disappointed.

So overall, a really eclectic mix of the good and bad that comes with lower-budget foreign movies.  At its worst, this movie is pretty bad, and I struggled getting through the early portions of the story.  The final run time is 98 minutes so we're not talking a long, epic movie, but it sure did feel like it at times.  For me, the only way I can recommend this movie is because of Bruce Lee's immense talent and some still unmatched fight sequences, especially the finale.  Know what to expect from 'Way' and you won't be disappointed. Just don't expect a classic like Enter the Dragon.

Way of the Dragon <---trailer (1972): **/****