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The Delta Force (1986)

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From Time Out Film Guide

Once more the dream machine rewrites US foreign policy; after Rambo, we now get their Delta Force. Amid all the pyrotechnics of airport hijackings, blown over stunt men, rackety chases through bazaars, all of it quite competently handled, there are a few asides of interest. Students of minimal acting techniques can compare Marvin and Norris: impassivity versus vacancy. Students of the disaster film should write a short thesis on why George Kennedy is ubiquitous. Everyone else might wonder why the film is so virulently anti-Arab. CPea.

Author: CPea

Time Out Film Guide

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S said...

Posted on Jan 07 2009 03:43 Delta Force is easily Chuck Norris' best movie, in part because little is seen of the martial arts master until the end, and his acting scenes are kept to a bare minimum. Norris is not the star of this movie; that honor goes to the terrorist leader who leads the plane's hijacking.
Variety's review is better: this film starts off as an accurate portrayal of the 1985 TWA flight hijacking. TimeOut's reviewer, CPea, might take a history lesson to answer their wonderment about the movie's "virulently anti-Arab" (or more accurately, "anti Islamic terrorist") sentiments. She might consider the terrible cost of Islamic terrorism in justifying the film's stance. Not all the world's ills are the faults of America or Israel; inhumane, suicidal, ruthless, and often irrational Islamic extremists and terrorists share much of the blame. "Delta Force" does not even try to trivialize this fact, as do so many America-hating leftists.
But many of the world's ills *are* the fault of America and Israel, partly in failing to humanize the problem and see them not as "evil" people, but instead people who have been blinded by religious dogma seeking to act on it -- much like the Christians during the Crusades -- and on this point is where the film, being a product of the far-right-wing, Israeli-run Golan Globus Productions, switches from a 3.5-star (the allusions to Nazi Germany are genuinely touching) historical account to a 1.5 star action film. Norris reprises his typical role in promoting and enforcing his brand of forceful, pro-military revisionist history.
Taken together, it's a strange brew, and often a slow one in spite of all the action the cover alleges. Take half the movie as the sort of right-wing fantasy action for which Golan-Globus is famous, mix it with an historical drama for the other half, and enjoy it darkly and pessimistically as a foreshadowing of the anti-terrorist paranoia -- understandable, but carried too far -- that has proceeded in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks.

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