Monday, June 22, 2009

Operation Delta Force



The DVD case proudly claims that Delta Force 'would make Rambo look like a dress wearing sissy!' Now that's some bold talk right there and as I'm sure you've guessed that's all it is. Directed by Sam Firstenberg (American Ninja and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) and starring Ernie Hudson (Winston from Ghostbusters) it holds my childhood in its hands. I can't count how many times i watched American Ninja as a kid maybe even more than i watched Ghostbusters. How you can make a disappointing film when the benchmark is American Ninja is beyond me but the next 90 minutes proved it to be possible.

I don't know who to blame for this film, the men who wrote it or Firstenberg for agreeing to direct it. What starts as standard action fare soon takes a questionable turn into an area most screenwriters would, quite rightly, avoid like an M-People greatest hits CD. Terrorists break into a research facility in Mozambique (i think) and steal a vial of the Ebola virus engineered to become airborne and the only vial of the vaccine. Now this bit is good, nice simple idea that for a screenwriter just writes itself. Maybe that was the problem, bored writers trying something new and failing because what comes next can't be described as anything close to a success.

Like all good terrorists these guys have a cause to fight for, here we have a group of right wing, racist, white South Africans intent on using the recently acquired virus to do a spot of ethnic cleansing. Is it just me that finds this a topic a little inappropriate for a cheap ass TV action movie to wade into? I had a little think for ideas that i would find more inappropriate and the best i could come up with was Harold Shipman coming back from the dead to avenge the death of Princess Di by knocking off various members of the royal family.

The dodgy plot is not the only obvious indication of the lack of money involved in this production. As is pretty standard in most action movies bar 'Top Gun' all the shots of military aircraft are stock footage or Gulf War news footage. But that's to be expected, what isn't is the one explosion that is repeated whenever anything goes bang. The first time you see the exploding mine cart it makes sense because Delta Force are in a mine, when it crops up later the mine cart looks very out of place in the jungle and on a boat. The magic mine cart throws up another question, if these guys are well trained would they not think twice before using a grenade in an abandoned gold mine? Well they go for it anyway and surprise, surprise they get trapped in a cave in. Well done dickheads! Not only are you trapped but one of you has a massive rock crushing his leg but don't worry you've a medic on hand, just not a very good one. When a trained medic has to ask 'which leg is it?' you know your in trouble, could it be the one with the huge fuck off rock on top of it.

So yeah the films goes on and Delta Force save Africa all by themselves, whoop de fuckin' doo. My favourite part of the whole experience was after the film i went to look at the special features only to find that the words 'Special Features' on the menu were just that, words. You couldn't actually choose the special features so one can only assume the words 'Special Features' constitute a special feature in their own right.

2 comments:

Eris said...

"here we have a group of right wing, racist, white South Africans intent on using the recently acquired virus to do a spot of ethnic cleansing."

- this line made me put my head in my hands. I don't think I've ever seen a film where South Africans aren't fairly evil. (The Gods Must Be Crazy doesn't count because it was made by South Africans, and in any case white people in general are mocked as fairly foolish, but in a nice way :S) It's weird because we're a relatively pleasant people >.<

Milo_Myage said...

Right that's my new challenge, to find a friendly South African in a Hollywood movie. There must be at least one.