Operation Delta Force is not connected to the Delta Force films of Cannon, other than the name. In this iteration, directed by DTVC Hall of Famer Sam Firstenberg, Jeff Fahey runs the team with a group of names you'd be familiar with, including another DTVC Hall of Famer in Frank Zagarino, Rob Stewart from Sweating Bullets, Todd Jensen, and Natasha Sutherland, who appeared in a couple Tarzan episodes, which is important, because Joe Lara is our baddie. He's part of an Afrikaans Neo-Nazi separatist group that steals a virus and the serum from a US base that Ernie Hudson is visiting, and when Fahey's Delta Force team find Hudson, he teams up with them to take Lara down. Will they succeed?
There's a lot going on in this film for a movie that's your standard "rah rah special forces save the day!" kind of movie. First off, we have a near Destro Effect with Neo-Nazi baddies, which I didn't think I'd ever see, but between Joe Lara turning in his best performance after Steel Frontier, and our heroes being jerks and dead fish, it was moving in that direction; but luckily Ernie Hudson was a likeable hero. I'm not sure what Fahey was supposed to be giving us, but it wasn't anything I wanted to root for; and then Zagarino's character was a chauvinist, which, again, why am I rooting for that. It's like when two sports teams I don't like are competing for a championship, I'm rooting for the asteroid, and had it not been for Ernie Hudson, the asteroid might have been a good way to wrap this up. There's other weird stuff going on that we'll address in the following paragraphs, like how we had pro-apartheid baddies, which felt like the Millennium/Nu Image guys trying to account for the fact that they made a lot of money during apartheid in South Africa; or how we had a quick Clinton Presidential Portrait, plus a couple obscured Al Gore portraits, and a mention that "the President" called for an infected zone, which included our heroes, to be bombed, which meant Clinton, who we don't see beyond the portrait, was the "government jerk guy" who considered our heroes to be expendable losses that they needed to overcome. But it's also directed by Firstenberg, has a bunch of other names, and some decent action, so it's not a total waste, just more weird than anything, which may make it more or less worthy of your viewing, especially if it's on a free streamer.
Usually for a Hall of Fame induction post we try to have a more solid winner, and I think this is probably more winner than loser, but it is one of the pitfalls of picking movies I haven't seen before, you never know what you're going to get, and I figured between Firstenberg directing and the other names involved that we should be okay. And I guess that's the thing, we were okay, just in the nothing remarkable versus the safe connotation. Looking at their filmography on IMDb, they really hit their stride in the mid-90s with films like the Cyborg Cop series, and then give us an all-time classic in Hard Justice, and from there I think they just coasted through the 90s and into the 2000s, coming in as Cannon is going bankrupt, and then overlapping with PM's run, but outlasting them into the 2000s where they transitioned into the DVD era of DTV, making films with guys like Dudikoff, Dolph, Van Damme, and Segal; but they've also moved beyond that and are still managing to thrive in the streaming world, putting out both theatrical releases and straight-to-streaming films. The other thing that this film did almost ten years before The Asylum's War of the Worlds was utilize the Mockbuster concept, as they knew Cannon had hits with the Delta Force films, so why not trade on that name? It's a legacy rooted in the DTV world, but unlike Cannon before them, their forays into the theatrical release world haven't been Icarus flying too close to the sun kinds of things, they've managed to enhance their business. This has probably been long overdue, but it's good they're in now.
Part of why it's been overdue is addressed to some extent by the plot of this film, which is something I mentioned above. Millennium's history was as a production company that Cannon worked with to make films on the cheap in apartheid South Africa, including one of their best, American Ninja 2, and not long after that in 1988 Cannon ended their partnership due to the brutal apartheid policies in South Africa, which is what led to the formation of Nu Image/Millennium Films in 1992. I think their history must've been a sticking point though, perhaps in getting people to work with them--though they'd gotten some big names before this--and in that sense this film feels like their way of distancing themselves from their apartheid-based past. Does it work though? On the one hand it feels like the guilty doth protest loudly, but also I think they had to do something like this, whether it was sincere or not. But that means our baddies are an Afrikaans Neo-Nazi paramilitary separatist group that the US Delta Force has take down, which also felt odd, even with the construct of the baddies getting their hands on this bad virus. Then you make one of those baddies a scenery-chewing Joe Lara who has more charisma than the whole of the Delta Force combined, and the whole thing feels like a jumbled mess. It's like, I can't root for Lara, he's a Neo-Nazi; but I can't root for Fahey and his team because they're a bunch of jerks; and why am I rooting for anyone anyway, why am I even here in South Africa? And then someone throws a grenade, a couple stuntmen go flying forward with an explosion behind them, and I forget all about the other stuff.
We have two other Hall of Famers in this, so we need to give them a paragraph now too. For Sam Firstenberg, this is his 14th film as a director, which puts him in a tie with Jesse V. Johnson for fifth all-time, after being in a three-way tie for sixth all-time with Art Camacho and Keoni Waxman. Looking at his IMDb bio, I see a few more films of his we could do, but that would only get him to 17, which is what Isaac Florentine's at with two more films to review, and Fred Olen Ray, with dozens left to do. Still, he's a Hall of Famer due to his quality, not his quantity, and while this isn't his highest quality film, it's still pretty decent. And then we have Zags. Not a lot for him to do beyond some well-placed wooden lines and a fair amount of chauvinism. And then to redeem himself, he has the classic "baddie gets the drop on him, but before he gets shot, the lady he's been giving a hard time the whole film saves him, and now he has a new respect for her." You know what I like in my heroes? No chauvinism period. Like why do you need to be saved by a woman to respect them? How hard is it to just be a good person? But good or bad, it is another tag for Zags, which gets him to 17. He has enough left to do that he could make the 30 Club when all is said and done, I just need to review more of his stuff. Finally, while not a Hall of Famer, we're at 8 films for the late Joe Lara. I see about 7 more of his we could do, so probably not enough to get him into the DTV Hall of Fame, but if there were a syndicated TV show Hall of Fame, he'd definitely be in that. Maybe something for me to consider if I ever get more time.
Finally, I mentioned the Clinton Presidential Portrait in this. You can barely see it, I almost wondered if it was even meant to be in the shot. I wondered this, because later the order to blow up the village that's had the virus outbreak comes from "the President," which this shot establishes is Bill Clinton. I don't know if I've ever seen that in a film. Yes, parodies of the President, but an actual sitting president alluded to giving the order to take out a village, and with it our heroes as collateral damage. On top of that, we get two Al Gore portraits early in the film, completely by themselves. Why? What government offices would just have Gore's portrait on them? This wasn't like Shark Attack 3, where the Dick Cheney portrait was on the wall next to the Bush 43 one. None of it makes any sense, unless people involved with making this film had an ax to grind with Clinton, which isn't inconceivable either. But even then, how could you have an ax to grind with Clinton and instead put Gore's portrait on the wall? Unless maybe the people who had an ax to grind with Clinton were friends of Gore's and they thought he wasn't treating him well. Again, none of it makes any sense, and adds to the nonsensical nature of this film.
But maybe the nonsensical nature is what makes it just interesting enough to be worth checking out. Multiple free streamers have it, though Tubi isn't one, despite what Tubi says. I think it's because the Spanish language version is on there. And congratulations to Millennium Films for finally making it into the DTVC Hall of Fame. It's overdue, and definitely warranted.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119839
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