It’s 1990 and the once thriving Cannon Goup has all but crumbled into dust – but from the wreckage of the studio that flew close too the sun (and had a shitty business practice to boot) emerged a man practically immune to the petty inconvenience of something as inconsequential as entire movie studio folding. That man, obviously, was Chuck Norris and after his previous attempt to revive Cannon’s fortunes failed with the supremely cheesy Braddock: Missing In Action III, it was time to bring Scott McCoy and the Delta Force out of retirement to take things in hand once more.
The previous Delta Force wore its politics on his sleeve and essentially a stunningly gung-ho retelling of the actual hijacking of TWA flight 847 only with added missile launching motorcycles, but for the sequel, Norris turned his attentions on a much bigger threat – the war on drugs.
Lizard-like drugs kingpin Ramón Cota has a stranglehold on the cocaine production that floods the U.S. on a seemingly daily basis and despite the best efforts of the DEA, the softly spoken madman outwits the agents at every turn and has then regularly sent home in body bags shot with more holes than a Tennessee road sign.
Enraged, the over emotional General Taylor orders Colonal McCoy and his buddy, Major Bobby Chavez, to skyjack Cota from a commercial flight and bring him to the U.S. to face charges, but after a successful mission, Ramón bail is set way too low and the world’s richest drugs baron is once again free to do whatever the hell he wants.
Unfortunately, what he wants is revenge for this outrage, so after killing Bobby’s pregnant wife and younger brother he also kidnaps Bobby himself and three DEA agents after they attempt to take him down in retribution. After executing Bobby in his own private gas chamber (every drug kingpin should have one, apparently), Ramón sends his colleagues a recording of his death throes with a warning that any attempt by America on his property will result in the murder of the hostages.
This is all the excuse that McCoy needs to single handedly storm Ramón’s compound and free the prisoners before the Americans are legally allowed to do anything about it. Scaling mountains that apparently can’t be scaled and facing down insurmountable odds armed only with a machine gun and his lethal limbs, McCoy descends upon San Carlos like a bearded angel of death as he aims to win the war on drugs all on his lonesome as he cracks necks and impaling henchmen in order to revenge for his dear friend, whatshisface.
While the first Delta Force movie tried to actually feel somewhat close to an actual military movie before having Chuck Norris drive a motorcycle through a depot’s living room window, Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (alternate subtitle: Operation Stranglehold) plays more like an unofficial Missing In Action sequel with Chuck’s terrorist crushing alter egos being predictably similar to one another. Actually, now that I think about it, Invasion U.S.A.’s Matt Hunter is practically the same guy too, so I don’t know why I’m pretending to act so surprised. Anyway, with a bemused looking Lee Marvin long gone, it was time for Norris to run things solid and we’re reintroduced to McCoy in a Chinese resturant as he pounds the will to live out of a trio of skinheads who look like they’ve walked directly out of Death Wish 3. I only bring this up because it sort of becomes a running thread throughout the movie where Chuck shows up to right some wrongs, utterly wrecks the place he’s supposed to be saving and then the people living/working there gingerly creep back in to give a stilted “thank you” while patriotic music plays and more than any other movie that exists, you can’t help hearing the theme tune from Team America: World Police blaring in the back of your hippocampus.
To double down on the point I clumsily made earlier, I honestly have no idea why they didn’t make Delta Force, Missing In Action and Invasion U.S.A. into one big super franchise and just give him one name for all the nuance Norris gives to each character. One minute big Chuck looks so incensed at the news of his dead friend, he literally looks like he’s about to shit himself with rage; yet he is immediately pseudo-flirting with his San Paulo contact despite the fact that he’s well aware of the staggering cruelty that’s been inflicted upon her by the sinister antagonist. From there, Chuck does his best to will more of those Chuck Norris memes into reality by climbing up an unclimbable mountain while only using his bare hands despite there clearly being climbing gear attached to his belt and hilariously brutalising his own men duringa training exercise in an effort to burn off some of his rage.
It’s a good thing then that Delta Force 2’s bad guy is so absurdly evil thanks to the serpentine performance of out of control career villain, Billy Drago. Drago, who was last seen being machine gunned in the dick by other career villain Richard Lynch in Invasion U.S.A., simply goes for broke, overplaying his part to a near-ludicrous extremes while the script serves him a near infinite amount of atrocities to act out including murder, the off-screen the death of a newborn baby and even a instance of rape – but this only serves to make his beatings at the hands of the good guys all the more satisfying.
The plot, if we can charitably even call it that, is essentially a far less classy Licence To Kill, but like a lot of Cannon area Chuck Norris vehicles, if you treat the outlandish happenings and near-deranged patriotism as a comedy, you frequently get the best results. Director Aaron Norris (yep, Chuck’s brother) may hardly be John Woo when it comes to staging stylish action, but his clean, basic style keeps all the helicopter strafing runs, explisuons and ass whuppings easy to follow and great support is given by John P. Ryan bellowing General who seems to be ad-libbing and overacting like his life depends upon it.
There’s a fair few nifty stunts to enjoy (although all the multiple skydiving sequences suggest that someone on the production had seen the opening scene of Moonraker one too many times) and watching Norris clock a due on a swivel chair with a right so hard he spins around – only for him to clock him with a left and spin him the other way – is worth the price of admission alone; but only lovers of idiotic action flicks will get the true best of this film as Chuck wallops out yet another streaming dish of violent cheese.
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