What would America do without enemies? Or, more to the point, what would American movies do without enemies? For one thing, the five people killed in a helicopter crash during the making of DELTA FORCE 2 might still be alive (the crash also seriously injured costars John Ryan and Mateo
Gomez). After a flurry of lawsuits and amid depressingly familiar accusations of inadequate safety on the set, the film's stunt coordinator, Dean Ferrandini, was voted out of the International Stunt Association. And what was it all for? To present theaters and video stores with yet another
boneheaded action epic noteworthy mostly for its shift of American right-wing political paranoia away from the Soviet Union and on to the Third World. Battles that were once fought over ideology are now fought over drugs. It's a tricky maneuver. Nobody ever had to convince American moviegoers that
communism was bad. The Berlin Wall, after all, wasn't built to keep people out. But now the Wall is history, and the communist world is busily taking on a capitalist sheen. Illicit drugs are a different matter. Here is a commodity on which billions of American dollars are spent every year without
so much as a nickel being allocated for promotion or advertising. Thus, it surely can be said of the drug war that we have met the enemy and they are us.
DELTA FORCE 2 doesn't ignore this irony. Its script merely soft-pedals it by putting this terse assessment of the drug problem into the mouth of the corrupt defense minister of the fictional South American country of San Carlos, where most of the action takes place. DELTA FORCE 2 actually opens in
Argentina--not a fictional country, but one with a US extradition treaty--where DEA agents led by John Page (Richard Jaeckel) are trying to arrest San Carlos drug kingpin Ramon Cota (Billy Drago, best known for his portrayal of Frank Nitti in THE UNTOUCHABLES) during a Mardi Gras celebration. Of
course, the agents arrest the wrong guy (after all, the opening credits still haven't ended). Cota's goons, meanwhile, ambush the DEA command post, killing everyone inside. Back in the States, the Delta Force, the elite Army squad formed (as shown in the first film) to combat Middle Eastern
terrorism, is activated to arrest Cota in mid-air while a jet in which he is a passenger briefly enters American air space. Leading the Force is Chuck Norris, reprising his role as Col. Scott McCoy, who, along with best buddy Bobby Chavez (Paul Perri), carries off the arrest without a hitch. Freed
on one of those all-purpose action-movie legal technicalities, Cota stays in the US just long enough to kill the wife and son of Chavez, Chavez having impulsively punched out Cota in the courtroom. In a blind fury, Chavez follows Cota back to San Carlos to kill him, only to be stopped within yards
of his quarry by fellow agents, including Page, who are then captured by Cota's men. Not only does Cota torture and kill Chavez in an effort to obtain the name of the spy in Cota's midst who informed the Americans of his flight plans, but the drug kingpin also videotapes the whole grisly business
to send to Chavez's Delta Force pals back in the US. They react by invading San Carlos to rescue Page and to destroy the country's cocaine industry. It's at this point that DELTA FORCE 2 gets into high gear. The actual rescue is handled by Norris--singlehandedly, of course--who scales a sheer
cliff to get to Cota's compound, where the agents are being held. Meanwhile, Ryan, as Delta Force's General Taylor, and Gomez, as a hectoring San Carlos official, wing around the country in the ill-fated helicopter, blowing up rural villages that harbor cocaine refineries.
Under the direction of Aaron Norris (yes, Chuck's brother), the performances are largely superfluous to the boom-boom, stand-tall heroics. And that's a good thing. Chuck Norris' acting skills have not noticeably improved. He still has the dull, sullen screen presence of a baked potato. Oddly, he
also disappears from the action for long stretches. But even performers who should know better and who are given more screentime offer little in the way of performances. Drago, especially, vamps his way through the film looking somewhat like Emo Phillips on a bad night. As if any more irony were
needed, most of the best acting is done by Ryan and Gomez, who have an unexpected comic chemistry in their scenes together. To Aaron Norris' credit, the action moves along at a ferocious pace, never letting the plot's pile of implausibilities get in the way of well-staged battles and rescues. But
despite these mitigating factors DELTA FORCE 2 remains yet another entry in a tiresome, retrograde genre, made even harder to watch by the realization that people died getting this tedious warmongering crud on the screen. (Violence, profanity.) leave a comment