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The
Delta Force
Menahem Golan, USA, 1986
Rating: 4.2 |
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Posted: December 27, 2002
Chances are if you don't care for Toby Keith's tune "Courtesy of the Red, White
and Blue (The Angry American)." you probably won't find much to like in The
Delta Force. In which case, you're depriving yourself of a Chuck Norris
masterpiece. Some of my Shaking Through compatriots would denounce this classic
as unadulterated, extra-strength jingoism, as if that's a bad thing. I mean,
when you've got Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin with rocket-firing motorcycles
leading the charge against terrorists, how can you not score? If the producers
could have found a role for Charles Bronson, we'd be talking cinematic Nirvana
here, but you can't have everything. The plot involves a group of terrorists who
hijack a plane, take hostages and generally act all rowdy and in need of a
beat-down. (One piece of advice: Never get on an airplane with George Kennedy.
In every film, he's a disaster magnet.) Enter the Delta Force. In a scene
certain to make Kevin Moreau grimace, Lee Marvin
instructs his men to put on their Velcro American flag shoulder patches and gear
up for an old school "beatin'." It brought a tear to my eye. (Editor's Note:
Clemenza makes some erroneous assumptions here. I'm pretty liberal, it's true,
but I'm quite a fan of Delta Force. -- KFM) While there's much to enjoy
here, Delta Force will always be remembered for one of the greatest
cinematic ass-beatings since James Caan brutalized his brother-in-law in The
Godfather. If you've ever wondered just what a "whole can of whoop-ass"
entails, Chuck's serving of classic "Norris justice" to seedy bad guy Abdul
(convincingly portrayed by Robert Forster) will clear it up for you. Delta
Force is a great action film, one that removes the all-too-pervasive gray
areas between good and evil. My "social betters" will label films like this as
elemental jingoism. Maybe so, but that's because they have made situational
clarity such a rarity in real life that it is cherished wherever it can be
found, even in a Chuck Norris film.
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