Delta Force: Movie Trilogy (1986-91)

Delta Force: Movie Trilogy (1986-91)

Dirs. Various

01. Much of the first movie takes place onboard an aeroplane in flight, with an ensemble cast that's underused. Chief hijacker Abdul (Robert Forster) is moustachioed and menacing. but he didn't reckon on the Deltas doing their thing.

The opening shot sets movie's tone perfectly, for good or ill. The scene that follows, wherein special ops member Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) does what other men won't, reinforces it tenfold: it's 80s action from Canon Films with rugged men and many guns (Dir. Menahem Golan).

The team wear covert black duds with a bright US flag patch on the arm lest the audience forget who they're cheering for, or the enemy forget who to shoot. Gotta keep those bullets flying.

If they get tired walking they have motorcycles that shoot mini-missiles. Abdul and his cronies are boned - even if Chuck is perpetually late to the party and Silvestri's music sucks.

02. In Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990 / Dir. Aaron Norris) Major Scott McCoy goes up against Columbian drug lord Ramón Cota (Billy Drago) and his personal army. Cota is characterised as a particularly nasty shit-bag in the most one-note fashion imaginable, but the entire movie is just as cliché-ridden, so he doesn't feel out of place in any way.

In preparation for gunfights, explosions, and the inevitable face-to-face martial arts showdown with the main villain, McCoy partakes in some training montages in order to handpick a team of his own. We learn nothing about them as individuals. It feels like they were written in because someone knew that viewers would expect to see a full team of Deltas. But it hardly matters because they're little more than eventual backup, as Chuck pretty much goes it alone.

03. Delta Force 3: The Killing Game (1991 / Dir. Sam Firstenberg) has no Chuck Norris. Boo! It has his son Mike Norris instead, who I'm sure was cast on actual merit and not due to family relationship; just as Aaron Norris wasn't considered as director of DF2 because he's Chuck's brother... no, sir, not at all. The movie industry is a paragon of virtue, don'tcha know?

All cynicism aside, young Norris does well, so credit to him. In fact, I liked DF3 a lot more than I liked DF2, mostly because it returns to the team-based format of the first film. For bonus drama the US group are begrudgingly paired up with a similar team from a foreign country. Their shared goal is to stop a Middle Eastern terrorist (Jonathan Cherchi) from detonating an atomic weapon on US soil. It's mostly predicable stuff, but it has some genuine tension, unlike DF2.

The best thing about the production is polyglottal team member Irenia Usuri, played by Israeli actress Hanna Azoulay Hasfari. There's no shortage of sausage factory explosions for those that like that kind of thing, but it's a brave and resourceful lady that raises the bar on this one.