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!

Heat Street (1987)

Heat Street (1987)-* * *

Directed by: Joesph Merhi

Starring: Del Zamora and Quincy Adams Jr.













Virgil (Adams Jr.) is a boxer who is nearing the end of his career. He’s mainly a trainer now, working at the boxing gym. He’s going through a wistful period in his life, and these nostalgic days are rudely interrupted when the local street gangs assault his daughter. Blake (Zamora) is a repo man who has at least one relative in one of the gangs, and knows the gang scene fairly well. Blake has a good job and a loving wife, and wants to eradicate the gang problem currently plaguing their California town. When the unlikely pair of Virgil and Blake team up to tackle the thuggery, the concrete will become HEAT STREET!

Not to be confused with Beat Street (1984), Heat Street is another City Lights production (for those who don’t know, it was the pre-PM company of Pepin and Merhi). Like other City Lights movies, here the P and the M were still finding their way in the world of action. It’s interesting to see the formative stages of what would become the leader in DTV action movies. So they were finding their way in the world, and what others may see as amateurish, we see as the beginnings of the PM empire.

Also their obsession with repo men continues (or, rather, starts, as Chance and Repo Jake came later). Pepin and Merhi were ahead of their time - now there are about 12 reality shows about repo people. The movie opens with what you might call “profiles in weirdness”, as the bizarrely hairstyled and dressed gang members pose for glamour shots. That’s how you know these people are in gangs. Because they dress like rejects from The Warriors (1979). One of their modes of attack is “Bikefighting”, something later expounded upon and improved in later PM’s.

Our TRUE sixth President, Quincy Adams Jr., plays the Black boxer with a lot of pride. Most of his lines are spoken with a nearly-impossible-to-hear mumble that really won our respect. I mean, if you’re an actor who has only been in a scant few projects, and you don’t make the slightest effort so the audience can hear your voice, you must be a confirmed badass who honestly doesn’t care what you think about him. Our hat goes off to  you, Quincy Adams Jr. You really should have been in more stuff.  His counterpoint, Del Zamora, has been in countless projects and really made a nice career for himself. But here he just barely holds his own with QAJr. But it’s not Zamora’s fault, he does his best, it’s just that QAJr. is a force to be reckoned with.

There’s the time-honored poolhall brawl, and the not-so-time-honored “scene where four people around a dinner table ALL take turns reading their fortune cookies”.  Well, you can’t have a boxing movie, or a boxing match, without some padding. There are elements in Heat Street of both The Hitter (1979) and Cold Justice (1989), and as a film, it falls, quality wise, somewhere in between the two.

If you’re already familiar with that City Lights style, do check out Heat Street if you can find it. If not...well, check it out anyway as an example of the vibrant days of the video store, when shelves were chock full of material just waiting to be put in your VCR to be taken a chance on.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett