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Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection
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| Year: |
1990
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Director: |
Aaron Norris
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| Stars: |
Chuck Norris, Billy Drago, John P. Ryan, Richard Jaeckel, Begonya Plaza, Paul Perri, Héctor Mercado, Mark Margolis, Mateo Gómez, Ruth de Sosa, Gerald Castillo, Geoff Brewer, Rick Prieto
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| Genre: |
Action, Thriller |
| Rating: |
  4 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
The D.E.A. have closed in on the drug lord Ramon Cota (Billy Drago) during this carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and are tracking him with their surveillance van, with another team led by Agent Page (Richard Jaeckel) infiltrating the party Cota is attending to arrest him. However, once Page unmasks the man he believes he has caught, he realises there has been a switch, and worse than that the agents in the van are mown down by their enemy's machine gun fire. There's only one thing to do, and that's call in Delta Force commando Colonel Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris)...
Yeah, if there was anyone who could put a stop to the cocaine trade it would be Chuck, right? Oh, except that trade still continues and Chuck retired ages ago. Hey ho, can't win them all. But the choice of bad guys for many of these eighties (and after that decade) action movies was nevertheless interesting because it bought into the idea that Central America should be demonised for allowing their drugs to flood America and other countries, when of course the Iran-Contra scandal of the same era revealed that it was in fact America who were shamefully behind the massive success of those drugs lords.
Naturally when it was exposed that the C.I.A. had been explicitly allowing the criminals' drugs influx to back the right wing rebels who were trying to overthrow the less United States friendly, left wing governments, and were in fact responsible for countless drug addictions and millions of dollars going straight into the pockets of some seriously dodgy people, something had to be done, so Oliver North and his chums spearheaded a fresh spate of patriotism by making it look as if they had actually been doing their superpower a favour, not by ruining so many of their citizens' lives with crack, but by taking a stand against Communism at the height of the Cold War, and many bought into this as the alternative (ie. the truth) was too awful to accept.
Hence all those action flicks where the drug lords... well, you get the idea, and Chuck Norris was only too pleased to help in more than one movie; this example was supposedly a sequel to Cannon's Delta Force, but didn't feature any hijackings or anything like that, no, this was strictly hard men on a mission to bring down the bad guys. Which it looks like McCoy does when he manages to capture Cota by flinging him out of a plane while it's at 30,000 feet, with no ill effects to anybody involved as McCoy leaps after him with a parachute - the big guy was just toying with him! But, oh-oh, come the courtroom scene, the judge sets the bail at chickenfeed enabling Cota to snarl "Ain't ya glad ya live in a democracy?!" and kill off McCoy's friend and his family in revenge.
Well, Chuckles isn't going to take that lying down, but what he does seem to be quite happy to do is allow veteran character actor John P. Ryan to pretty much walk away with the movie. Sure, Drago was slimy enough in the antagonist role, but if it had been Ryan as the baddie instead of playing the General ally of McCoy then we would have had a real movie. This General is certifiably nuts, relishing the chance to break all sorts of international laws to satisfy his thirst for blowing things up good - blowing things up real good. Ryan sails over the top with hilarious gusto, as if to say damn that democracy, it sounds un-American to me when we can destroy the drug dealers with a well aimed missile and not worry about any consequences. Meanwhile Chuck spends most of the middle section climbing a mountain to reach Cota's Bond villain lair (should have parked closer, mate). If you like mindless violence and what can only be described as unintentional camp, then you'll know to catch this one. Music by Frédéric Talgorn.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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