The Delta Force Blu-ray offers solid video and decent audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release
A 707 aircraft flight from Athens to Rome and then to New York City is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. The terrorists demand that the pilot take them to Beirut. What the terrorists don't realize is that an elite team of commandoes led by Major McCoy and Colonel Alexander has been called into service to eliminate them and retake the plane before the terrorists kill all the hostages.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
20th Century Fox Entertainment will release on Blu-ray three action films starring Chuck Norris: Joseph Zito's Missing in Action (1984), Lance Hool's Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985), and Menahem Golan's The Delta Force (1986). The three films, which will ...
