U.S. Seals (2000)

U.S. Seals (2000)- * *1\2

Directed by: Yossi Wein

Starring: Jim Fitzpatrick, Greg Collins, Ty Miller, Justin Williams, Geff Francis, and Hayley DuMond





"Keep your eyes on the chicken."



Mike Bradley (Fitzpatrick) is the leader of a SEAL team which also includes his compadres Cosgrove (Collins), A.J. (Miller), Gaines (Williams), and Gepson (Francis). They are routinely sent around the world to dangerous hotspots to do what SEALs do best. Unfortunately, some of the baddies involved in one of their raids enacts a tragic retaliation on Bradley's family. Now burning with revenge, he travels to Albania (of course) to get justice. Along the way, he and his team enlist the help of the mysterious Lucia (Du Mond) - but where do her allegiances truly lie? Will Mike Bradley and his team be the ultimate U.S. SEALS?


What's interesting about U.S. Seals is that it starts off as your standard military slog - you know, the standard, run-of-the-mill type of thing you've seen countless times before. At about the midway point, however, it becomes more of a revenge movie. Against all odds, it picks up steam and becomes more entertaining than it was before. So, that does set it apart from some of its contemporaries.


One of its many problems, however, is that it needed more of a name to help things along. Someone like a Damian Chapa, Nick Mancuso, Arnold Vosloo, Jack Scalia, Antonio Sabato Jr., or maybe a Mandylor. Either Costas or Louis will do. The main guy is sort of Matt LeBlanc-esque and all the other actors seem like they would be more at home on a 90's TV sitcom like Friends or Seinfeld. Odd for a military outing like this.


The turnaround from just a plain 'movie on a screen' to an enjoyable revenge plot was the neat trick that U.S. Seals pulls off. Still, you never get to know the characters all that well, so it makes it harder for us, the audience, to care about their plight. But it transforms nicely enough starting from the second half, we suppose.


Of course, there's all the military jargon and mindless shooting you could ever ask for. It's easy to see why the great Isaac Florentine stepped in to direct U.S. Seals 2 (2001). He gave the second installment a lot of life and pizazz, as he usually does. So that was a smart move on Nu-Image's part to bring him into the mix, even if it was just to change things up.


Other items of note: both pagers and minidiscs are seen on display, there are some classic old-school guard-tower falls for fans of that, Bradley's son seems to develop a foreign accent about 45 minutes into the film, and when one of the SEAL team members jumps from a train, he yells a very half-hearted (and thus very funny) "Aaaaah." 

The main (naturally and cliche-edly Eurotrash) baddie looks like some sort of genetic melange of Kurt Loder, Michael Pare, Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings, and what Jerry O'Connell will likely look like in the future. But mostly Loder. Instead of preening about and/or fighting our main hero in the time-honored final fight, you think he and Tabitha Soren will deliver us the MTV news.


So, while the first half may be your workaday military slog, the change of course puts U.S. Seals in a somewhat unique position among DTV SEAL movies of this ilk. Is it an all-time classic you must run out and see immediately? Hardly - but fans of this sort of thing may appreciate some of the differences here.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up from our buddy, The Video Vacuum! 

Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault (1999)

Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault (1999)-*1\2

Directed by: Mark Roper

Starring: Greg Collins, Joe Lara, Johnny Messner, John Laughlin, Hayley DuMond, Justin Williams, and Gary Hudson












“Mac” McKinney (Lara) leads his fellow Delta Force soldiers Sparks, Hutch and Vickers (Hudson, Williams and Messner, respectively) on many dangerous missions which mainly include going to depressed-looking eastern-European countries and shooting people. But they’re going to face their toughest challenge yet in the form of megalomaniacal baddie Olivio Garcia (Laughlin), a man who’s so demented he wants to use nuclear weapons to trigger massive earthquakes. Naturally he does all this from his underground command center (where do these baddies keep finding these things?) - so the soldiers bring along token female scientist Laurie Granger (DuMond) to try to use science to try and stop him, or something like that. Will our brave heroes stop this madman from earthquaking the world to death? Find out today!

So let me get this straight: there’s the Delta Force series, the Operation Delta Force series, the American Heroes series, and the U.S. Seals series, and they’re all separate entities, all doing their own thing. Assuming I’m correct here, let’s move on...Nu Image really knows how to churn out some serious crud. It’s nigh-impossible to imagine someone renting this in a video store. Patrons who haven’t seen the first three movies in the series will surely be scared away at the prospect of a fourth, and only die-hard fans are going to stick through four movies of this and beyond.

So it all gets a bit confusing, but director Mark Roper doesn’t help matters by giving us an unfocused, Gary Daniels-less movie that has plenty of very dumb moments. But, in an interesting twist, it’s these little moments that keep this movie afloat - barely. There are enough tiny little instances of something funny or somewhat interesting happening that pop up every few minutes where you say, “oh, okay, this isn’t so bad”. Just check out what happens during the snowboard/snowmobile chase (which feels a lot like AIP’s White Fury, 1990), the train shootout or one of the many scenes of gun-shooting. So while there are some glimpses of worthwhile-ness, this movie should have had more character development, explained what was going on just a bit more, and trimmed the constant battle sequences. If the movie had done this, it would have been a lot better.

 

If you are looking for a movie about breakaway seismologists, where characters wear T-shirts that proclaim “models suck” to the racquetball court, here you go. It also seems pretty influenced by The Soldier (1982). Thankfully there’s no CGI, or the proceedings would have been horrendous. But for the main baddie, the casting department found a man so generic-looking for this type of role, perhaps they thought they could confuse viewers. This “I’m not Wings Hauser or Peter Bogdanovich or Bruce Boxleitner or Barry Bostwick or Warren Beatty or Bruce Davison or James Spader” baddie also has an evil scarf. So you know he’s evil.

As far as the climax of the movie, it takes up far too much time. A climax is supposed to be exciting and somewhat brief. Here, it just goes on and on and on. That drains it of urgency and it just feels listless. So the climax should have been an actual CLIMAX and not an interminable time-filler. That just adds to the overlong feel of the whole movie. It kind of grinds to a screeching halt at that point.

Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault is yet more Nu Image filler. All their non-Isaac Florentine-directed movies are not that great, and this just isn’t memorable. It doesn’t stand out from the pack in any way. To quote one of the great Delta Force Soldiers (this was the 90’s, don’t forget), “PEACE!!!!”

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Also check out a write-up by: The Video Vacuum!