Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

The Delta Force Blu-ray Movie Review

Square-Jawed and Slack-Paced

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 10, 2012

With the release of The Expendables 2 almost upon us, it seems appropriate that this year has seen Blu-ray releases from the vault by two notable additions to the franchise, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris. In the 1980s, both were staples of Cannon Films, the independent distributor that was transformed by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus into a B-movie powerhouse with A-list aspirations. If they'd managed to bring off their planned Spider-Man film, who knows what they might have achieved? Still, before being brought down by a string of flops (including Superman IV: The Quest for Peace), Cannon had some notable accomplishments, including Norris' Missing in Action series and The Delta Force, co-written and directed by Golan himself. The first two MIA films and Delta Force have been released on Blu-ray by Fox/MGM, currently available only as Wal-Mart exclusives.

Norris has always been smart enough not to tax his limited acting range with anything other than an iconic (a less kind word would be "stereotypical") role where the character is defined by his "white hat" function in the plot. Good soldiers and honorable lawmen are well within his comfort zone. His Vietnam-era soldier, Braddock, in the MIA films always struck me as a more fearsomely effective engine of wish fulfillment than Sylvester Stallone's Rambo, because Braddock didn't waste energy emoting. He got right to work exacting revenge from the enemy.

But writer/director Golan had grander aspirations for Norris in Delta Force. He wanted nothing less than to use the action star as a vehicle through which to "get even" with international terrorism, as the world then knew it. Golan's original concept was to restage the American military's failed attempt in April 1980 to rescue the American hostages seized by Iranian revolutionaries at the U.S. embassy in Tehran the previous year—only this time, like Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds, Golan wanted to rewrite history so that the mission was successful. When early response to that concept proved unfavorable, Golan switched to an airplane hijacking, combining details from two historical incidents: the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, and the 1978 seizure of an Air France plane that was foiled by Israeli commandos in the action known as Operation Entebbe.

Painting on such a large canvas required a starrier cast than one typically finds in a Chuck Norris film, which is why we get Lee Marvin as Norris' commanding officer, Robert Vaughn as their superior in Washingon, a bevy of aging but familiar faces as passengers (including three Oscar winners), and, as the lead terrorist, an almost unrecognizable Robert Forster (who would later say that the role typecast him for a decade). The drawback, though, was that all these additional characters personified by skilled actors took attention away from the blond buttkicker who was the film's raison d'être. Delta Force runs over two hours, but the viewer has to wait almost an hour before Norris' Major McCoy starts taking down the bad guys. And Golan wasn't skilled enough as either writer or director to inject sufficient suspense into the commando "prep" scenes during the first half of the movie to balance the tension onboard the hijacked plane. The result is an unbalanced film that twiddles its thumbs for almost half its running time, waiting for Chuck Norris to finally get down to doing what the audience comes to a Chuck Norris film to see.

After a brief prologue depicting the frustration of the elite Delta Force commandos when, in 1980, they're all set to go into Tehran and rescue the Americans hostages, but never receive a "go" order, Delta Force divides roughly into two halves. The first is dominated by Robert Forster's Abdul, as he leads a small group of armed men in seizing ATW Flight 282 from Cairo to Athens, terrorizing both the flight crew and the passengers. ("ATW" is an anagram of "TWA", get it?) The head flight attendant, Ingrid Harding (Hanna Schygulla), is especially disturbed when Abdul orders her to collect the passengers' passports and review them looking for Jewish names. For Miss Harding, a young German, this behavior evokes the Nazi "final solution" she recalls from her youth; she refuses to comply until Abdul threatens to kill passengers, and then she does his bidding with obvious distress.

The Jewish passengers are Americans returning from visits to Israel, and Abdul orders the men separated from their families, occasioning lengthy scenes of emotional farewells. The segregated hostages include Ben Kaplan (Martin Balsam), whose wife, Edie (Shelley Winters), has to be prevented at gunpoint from accompanying her husband; Harry Goldman (Joey Bishop), who bought his wife, Sylvia (Lainie Kazan), a ring with a Hebrew inscription that she fears will provoke their captors; and Robert Levine (Jerry Lazarus), who must persuade his tearful daughter, Ellen (Natalie Roth), to stay with her mother (Susan Strasberg) while he goes with their captors. A heroic Irish priest, Father O'Malley (George Kennedy), insists on joining these men, claiming that he, too, is Jewish, because Jesus was a Jew.

While the plane is on the ground in Beirut, Abdul arranges for this group of select hostages, along with several Navy divers traveling on leave, to be removed and taken to the terrorist group's secret headquarters. With the hostages now spread out, their rescue becomes even more of a challenge.

Throughout the first half of the film, we get glimpses of the U.S. military preparing a response under the command of General Woodbridge (Vaughn). As Colonel Alexander (Marvin) gathers the members of Delta Force for a rescue mission, everyone wonders whether Major McCoy will show, after the fiasco of the Iran operation—everyone, that is, except the audience, since we all know that McCoy will arrive in typical Chuck Norris fashion: late and making a last-minute grand entrance. (He does so twice in Delta Force.) But by the time the commandos have assembled, flown to the Middle East and been authorized to strike, the film is well into its second hour.

Director Golan stages a satisfying sequence in which the squad storms the terrorist stronghold and frees the hostages, with the aid of a Greek Orthodox priest who is also a covert Mossad agent (Shaike Ophir). This is followed by McCoy's pursuit of Abdul through the countryside and a stealth attack on the plane itself under cover of a dense cottonfield. But the film takes its sweet time reaching this payoff, and by the point where the members of Delta Force and the newly freed hostages finally fly off together to Israel singing "America the Beautiful", you may find yourself thinking that no amount of pyrotechnics, motorcycle madness and martial arts prowess is enough to justify the long, slow build-up.

The Delta Force Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Israeli cinematographer David Gurfinkel shot The Delta Force, as he has many films for director Golan, including Stallone's Over the Top. (He also shot Jean-Claude Van Damme's The Order for director Sheldon Lettich.) The image on Fox/MGM's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is consistent with the low-budget origins of the film. The source elements appear to be in remarkably good shape, largely free of print damage or other wear-and-tear. The picture is soft but reasonably detailed, probably about as much as one could expect from film stocks of the era using mostly natural light in real locations. Colors are undersaturated, consistent with the effect of bright sunlight or nighttime; hues are distinct but not emphatic. The film's grain structure is more noticeable than one would encounter in a contemporary production, but the grain does not appear to have been reduced or artificially manipulated by digital means, nor is there any indication of artificial sharpening. No compression errors were evident, which is not suprising given the use of a BD-50 and the lack of extras.

The Delta Force Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Delta Force features a DTS-HD MA 2.0 track that replicates that film's original stereo soundtrack. It provides clear, clean sound with acceptable dynamic range that supplies consistently intelligible dialogue, effects that achieve their storytelling purposes, and sufficient presence for Alan Silvestri's electronic score. When played through a matrix decoding system such as DPL IIx, the track creates a decent amount of surround ambiance.

Posters on the Blu-ray.com forum have reported that a 5.1 mix exists for Delta Force that has been used on some HDTV broadcasts. Having never heard it myself, I cannot offer a comparison. Fox/MGM apparently did not have the rights to that mix.

The Delta Force Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is the film's theatrical trailer (SD; 1:56). Fox has continued its unfortunate practice of omitting a main menu (so that the disc starts immediately and plays continuously) as well as the bookmarking feature (so that you can't mark a particular point for resuming play when you take a break). Fox includes these features on its own discs, but not on those it produces for MGM.

The Delta Force Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a Chuck Norris film, The Delta Force cannot overcome the basic obstacle of not having enough Chuck Norris in it. That wouldn't be such a handicap if the rest of the film were better. Unfortunately for director Golan, later filmmakers have so vastly improved on his efforts at telling the story of an airline hijacking that his own contribution now plays like creaky melodrama, despite the seriousness of the subject. For sheer realism and anxiety, it would be hard to equal Paul Greengrass' United 93. For the kind of pulpy thrill ride that Golan was clearly trying to make, he was far outdone ten years later by Stuart Baird's Executive Decision, which cleverly simplified the scenario so that all the action, including the rescue effort, quickly focused on the hijacked plane. Baird's film also used a different kind of villain, one who was the opposite of the hot-tempered thug that Forster was called upon to play in Delta Force. On screen, at least, nothing is more frightening than a well-mannered, soft-spoken gentleman who carefully considers what he's doing before putting a bullet in someone. Even Chuck Norris might hesitate for a moment.

For fans of The Delta Force, the Blu-ray, which is currently a Wal-Mart exclusive, is technically up to par. If you don't already know the film, I recommend waiting until you've had a chance either to see it in another medium, or to rent it when the exclusivity period ends.