Missing In Action 2: The Beginning

Here’s a simple question: when is a sequel not a sequel? When it’s a prequel, obviously.

But what if that film was never meant to be either a sequel or a prequel – what are we supposed to call it then?

Such terminological philosophising may seem like academic navel-gazing. How, you’re doubtless wondering, could you ever make a film without first knowing what it’s meant to be?

Ah, dear reader. You’re clearly not familiar with the weird history of the Missing In Action series.

The plot

The Vietnam War is over, but a group of American soldiers are still held as prisoners of war in a secret jungle camp.

Even though the conflict ended years ago, one dastardly prison commandant (Soon-Tek Oh) is making a point. He won’t release Uncle Sam’s boys until their leader (Chuck Norris) makes a false confession to committing war crimes.

But Chuck is made of stern stuff, his hide as thick as the triple-denim outfits he inexplicably favoured in several of his other movies. The mini-marvel refuses, so he and his men find themselves subjected to a never-ending campaign of psychological and physical torture.

So the grisly stage is set. Will Chuck crack and finally confess under his captor’s cruel crusade? Or can he and his men engineer an audacious escape? Er, yes.

You see, Missing in Action 1 – the film preceding this – was all about an ESCAPED prisoner of war, which does rather give the game away. Literally everyone watching this sequel knows exactly how things will end. Edge of your seat stuff, eh?

The cast

Given this film is notionally a sequel, the part of Captain James Braddock is once again played by Chuck Norris - the heroic and inevitably bearded leader of the American POWs.

Never the most verbose actor, our favourite beaver-in-human-form is on peak monosyllabic form here. Entire scenes take place where he does little more than grunt tersely or glower silently at his captors.

This may sound like harsh criticism, but in fact it’s high praise. Because there is perhaps no uglier cinematic sight than watching everyone’s favourite furry kung-fu pygmy trying to act. As Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry famously observed, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.”

Still, that’s not to say that the film is without at least one flamboyant turn. Enter Soon-Tek Oh as the vicious prison commandant, Colonel Yin. While the name may not be familiar, the face certainly will be. Mr Oh spent over 30 years playing a variety of Asian stereotypes in a *ahem* Chinese laundry list of TV shows and films. And his performance here could best be described as ‘stock Oriental villain #3’.

As the dastardly Colonel Yin, Soon-Tek is required to delight in many elaborate displays of cruelty, rage uncontrollably at his subordinates, and twizzle his moustache at the end of every scene.

Viewers of a liberal persuasion will find the performance a painful reminder of a time when Asian actors endured whole careers playing a handful of stock, cardboard caricatures.

Fortunately, we live in more enlightened times. These days, you can find a rich variety of three-dimensional Asian characters in all manner of Hollywood blockbusters. And who could find anything culturally inappropriate in top Manga movie Ghost In The Shell (starring Scarlet Johannsson), samurai classic 47 Ronin (hello, Keanu Reeves) or the Chinese fantasia, The Wall, starring, er, Matt Damon.

Sequel, prequel, what the hell should we call it?

Here’s a brief history of the chronological mess that is the Missing in Action movies. Having secured the services of Chuck Norris, legendarily tight-fisted producers Menahem Globus and Yoram Gohan were convinced that their Vietnam epic was going to be a success.

To save themselves the time, trouble, and particularly expense of returning to make an inevitable sequel, the parsimonious pair decided to shoot a follow-up at the same time. The first film would tell the tale of a brave American soldier who spent years in brutal captivity before escaping. The sequel would show our hero returning to ‘Nam to free other POWs.

Shooting commenced on both movies. And all seemed to be going swimmingly, until they ruined everything by actually taking a look at the dailies. Because while they had in fact made a very good movie – a bona fide smash, probably – it was the second one that worked. The first movie, the one meant to launch the whole mini-franchise, was a merde-ball, a dog’s dinner, an absolute stinker.

Realising that audiences would never watch their gem of a sequel if they’d been scarred by a terrible first film, the producers hatched a cunning wheeze: simply release the sequel first.

So, Missing In Action 2 became Missing In Action, while the original was rebadged as Missing In Action 2 with a handy subtitle – The Beginning – to explain the bonkers timeline to bamboozled viewers. Confused? Just wait until you hear about Missing in Action 3. (More of that later).

Why is it such a stinker?

What was it about this film that panicked producers so much? Put simply, Missing In Action 2 is possibly the most schizophrenic film Exploding Helicopter has ever witnessed. Individual scenes veer chaotically from daytime soap opera emoting to stomach-churning violence. (Picture Harold and Madge from Neighbours having a delicate squabble over the barbie, then Madge opening her hubby up stomach-to-throat with a flensing knife. It’s that kind of tonally awkward.)

One minute the POWs are swapping tear-jerking stories about their pregnant gals back home, the next Norris is suddenly biting the head off a rat. It’s very disturbing.

Having said that, given the choice between watching Wee Chuck floss his sizeable gnashers with rodent entrails or attempt some more ‘acting’, most viewers would probably choose the furry innards.

Exploding helicopter action

Generally speaking, Vietnam War films are a mecca for helicopter fans. You can barely get through five minutes of most ‘Nam movies without hearing the steady ‘thum-thum-thum’ of rotor blades as an open-sided chopper swings into shot. And many end up in flames.

So it’s no surprise to see the film open with our diminutive hairy star and crew flying low above the Vietnamese jungle in a chopper. And even less of a surprise when they come under heavy fire.

The whirly bird is fatally damaged and unable to land, so Chuck and his men bail out – jumping into a river they seem to handily be flying over. Without anyone at the controls, the stricken copter crashes into the ground and explodes – becoming yet another casualty of war.

Artistic merit

This is one horrible helicopter explosion. As the aircraft nears the ground, it suddenly disappears behind a very artificial-looking ball of flame.

Clearly embarrassed by the poor quality of his composite shot, the director wisely lingers but a moment on the fiery cloud before cutting away.

Exploding helicopter innovation

You don’t often see pilotless helicopters explode. The only other one that springs to Exploding Helicopter’s mind is in Piranha II: The Spawning.

Tagline

“An American hero’s story continues,” boasts the film’s poster, ignoring the fact this is a prequel. Then again, “An American hero’s backstory is completed” isn’t terribly catchy.

Interesting fact

After the first two films, you’d think it would be hard for the series’ chronology to become yet more convoluted. But that’s what happened with Braddock: Missing In Action 3 (1988).

In Chuck’s third ‘Nam outing, the long years of captivity are altogether expunged from his character’s history. (In a breath-taking flashback, we even see him airlifted home at the end of the war.) Worse, he’s suddenly given a Vietnamese wife and child who have hitherto never been seen nor mentioned, and whose existence flatly contradicts the entire events of MIA 2.

Not since a very-much-alive Bobby Ewing wandered out of the shower in Dallas (rendering the 31 episodes preceding his very noticeable death redundant), has Exploding Helicopter seen such a cavalier attitude to continuity.

Review by: Jafo

You can read a review of Missing In Action 2: The Beginning by our buddies over at Comeuppance Reviews.

Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection

Has there ever been a more unlikeable actor than Chuck Norris?

Taciturn, charmless, and with a cigarette paper-wide emotional range, Chuck somehow managed to maintain a 30-year career as a Hollywood star. All while looking like a lion forcibly mated with a squat female bodybuilder.

Despite such barriers to success, audiences flocked to his films. And sadly for Exploding Helicopter, he’s the charisma vacuum at the heart of Delta Force 2 (1990).

A sequel to the jingoistic, patriotic tub thumper The Delta Force, Norris returns as Colonel Scott McCoy the taciturn, charmless Special Forces commander with an emotional range as wide as a cig…….. oh, you can guess the rest.

The plot

America is flooded with cocaine, so Chuckie Boy is given a secret mission to capture drug baron Ramon Cota (Billy Drago), who’s holed up in the fictional South American country of San Carlos. The assignment has extra piquancy for Norris as Cota brutally killed his friend.

Now, those with more inquisitive minds may be wondering where, given the title, Colombia fits into all this. All I can say is, don’t trouble yourself with trifling details like that. Certainly, no-one involved in making this film did.

Who the hell’s in this? 

Our star is Carlos Norris (as he doesn’t like to be known). Never the most demonstrative of actors, Chuck is in particularly inexpressive form here.

During the film our hero has to watch a video of his best friend being cold-bloodedly murdered by the evil Cota. So, how does Chuck react to this horrifying moment? Does his tormented face portray the frustration and helplessness his character must feel as he witnesses his buddy slowly expire?

In a word: no.

Instead, Chuck stares blankly at the TV screen looking for all the world like a man waiting for the Ceefax page to change. And the Norris-nator’s leaden performance is not helped by the wildly divergent acting chops on display elsewhere.

As drug-lord Ramon Cota, Billy Drago gives a film-stealing turn of pantomime villainy. Listlessly lolling around his hideout, drawling his dialogue with theatrical relish he comes across like a homicidal lizard.

But Drago is made to look a modicum of restraint in comparison to B-movie stalwart John P Ryan, who plays Norris’ boss General Taylor. Twisting the over-acting dial to eleven, Ryan’s wildly eccentric turn appears to have no relevance to the film, the dialogue or even the part. He may be one of the good guys, but he’s potentially more nuts than anyone Norris is looking to bring to justice.

Chuck working through his emotional issues

The good

In case you thought Chuck was completely unmoved by the sight of his friend being sadistically killed, we do get a scene where he works through his grief and inner pain.

The weirdy-beardy decides to exorcise his demons and find emotional peace by beating up his entire Delta Force squad in an extended training montage.

"Feeling better?" Asks Chuck's boss as the battered bodies of the entire troop lie broken and scatted across the ground.

“Yes,” he replies. “But they’re not.”

What a nice guy.

The bad

Many a bad actor (John Wayne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, et al) has been saved by a director savvy enough to accentuate their stars strengths while hiding their flaws. Unfortunately, John Ford and James Cameron were unavailable to direct Delta Force 2, so instead the film is left in the dead hand of Aaron Norris. Hang on, that surname sounds familiar....

Yup, you've guessed it. After 15 profitable years working as his brothers’ stunt double, Aaron was – in a shameless act of nepotism – elevated to the role of director. While Norris Jr. may know how to fall from the top of a building or jump through a window whilst on fire, it’s abundantly clear he hasn’t a Scooby about how to direct or edit a film.

Under his control, seemingly straightforward scenes take on peculiar, unintended tones, as the camera inexplicably lingers on actors after they’ve delivered their lines. In places, all the awkward pauses and silences make you wonder if the brothers Norris were trying for a Pinteresque deconstruction of the human condition. Though, of course, it's also possible they simply didn’t know what they were doing.

The unwatchable

Against some stiff competition, perhaps the worst thing in this movie is Norris minor’s obsession with slow motion. I'm not sure Chuck delivers a single punch or kick without the frame being slowed to a crawl.

For fans of bone-crunching beat 'em ups, this Chuck-with-the-brakes-on routine becomes irritating. The easiest thing to do is just press fast-forward, which restores the fights to something resembling a normal speed.

Exploding helicopter action

Everyone's favourite form of fiery aviation doesn't arrive until the end of the film.

As Chuck attempts to make his getaway from Cota’s compound he’s pursued by a helicopter piloted by General Olmedo, a corrupt army officer who’s in cahoots with Cota.

Chuck Norris with the 'mad as a ship's cat' John P Ryan

When the car Chuck’s driving is crippled by rocket fire from the chopper, it looks like the game is up. With Chuck in the centre of his crosshairs, Olmedo – in typical villainous fashion - chooses to savour the moment and fatally pauses before administering the kill. (A familiar plot device taken to a high art by the Bond films).

The delay allows Chuck’s buddy General Taylor, piloting a helicopter of his own, to sneak up behind Olmedo and blast his opponent out the sky with a rocket. Having done the hard work the bonkers General gets to deliver the kiss-off line: “Bye-bye asshole.”

Artistic merit

Surprisingly, it’s pretty darn good. A lustrous, large fireball fills the screen. And while the scene is simply constructed and a tad predictable it’s still thoroughly enjoyable.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Innovation is not a concept that’s ever been knowingly embraced in a Chuck Norris film.

Positives

In recent years, Chuck Norris has become the subject of a famous internet meme. You know, that seemingly unending list of statements that attest to Chuck Norris’ incredible powers. Lines like “Chuck Norris doesn’t do push-ups. He pushes the Earth down.”

Interestingly, we can perhaps trace the origins of this phenomena to this film. Where after beating up a group of thugs in a bar, Norris is told off by a friend for breaking his promise not to get into a fight.
Norris replies, “I didn’t fight. I gave a motivational seminar.”

Negatives

It’s well known that the laws of physics do not apply in films. And Exploding Helicopter has always been fascinated by the objects which take on curiously bullet proof properties in movies.

Roger Moore’s discovery of bullet proof snow at the beginning of A View To A Kill has always been our favourite, but Delta Force 2 runs it a close second by featuring munitions resistant straw. Amazing.

Interesting fact

With a wooden leading man, a turgid script and the star’s stunt man brother directing, it’s not like this film didn’t have enough issues. But apparently Michael Winner was at one point set to make this film. Yee Gods.

Favourite line

We love the meaningless bollocks that’s regularly spouted in action films to give the dialogue a quasi-military feel. There’s a particularly fine example of the art here: “Eagle one, this is wildcard. Stranglehold is a go.”

Review by: Jafo

The Delta Force

That’s Delta Force: the elite of America’s armed forces.

Trained killers. Experts with guns, knives, and their bare hands. Specialists in covert operations, hostage situations, and clandestine missions of testicle shrivelling dangerousness.

So, when I sat down to watch this movie, I was ready. Ready to be shocked and awed by the military prowess on display. Ready to be wowed by the cold, calculating, precision with which this team of highly-trained special forces would execute their mission.

I certainly wasn’t prepared for a display of military bungling so inept that, had there been a scene where Barbara Windsor’s bra unexpectedly whizzed off as Sid James ha-ha-ha-ed in the background, I’d have happily believed I was watching a particularly flaccid entry in the Carry On series: Carry On Commando, if you like.

But before we embark on an unexpurgated post-mortem, let’s briefly deal with the cookie-cutter plot.

A group of Middle East terrorists from Central Casting (a little known disputed territory near the West Bank) hijack an airplane full of American disaster movie clichés. You know the ones – pregnant lady, nuns, gung-ho jocks, stoic pensioner and an implausibly happy married couple celebrating, with ill-timed misfortune, their silver wedding anniversary. (Perhaps they didn’t have the budget for a plucky dog who you think has died but turns up at the end unscathed.)

So, with the hostages facing death at the hands of the stereotypically swarthy Arabs, it falls to the titular Delta Force led by Chuck Norris (for it is he) to kick rag-head butt and rescue the unfortunate airline passengers.

Chuck Norris wearing a pubic wig

As we’ve remarked before, our Chuck is one of the most singularly odd-looking men ever to enjoy a Hollywood career. Not least because his trademark beard – an unkempt thicket of wiry, straggly hair – makes him look he has a pubic wig attached to his chin.

And given this movie was made in the Eighties, Norris’ own physical oddity is naturally accentuated by some truly horrific wardrobe choices. Having previously rocked an ill-advised ‘double denim’ outfit in VHS classic Invasion USA, Norris here throws any last vestiges of restraint to the winds and boldly goes where no style icon or fashionista has gone before: triple denim.

Yes, TRIPLE denim. In one remarkable scene we get to witness Charles in denim jeans, denim shirt AND a denim jacket. Had Chuck at this precise moment dropped his trousers, I’ve no doubt we’d have found him resplendent in a pair of stonewashed denim budgie-smugglers.

Sadly for any stylists in the viewing audience, Norris soon switches into combat fatigues (regrettably non-denim) to get on with the urgent business of rescuing the hostages. And it’s at this point that the Delta Force’s elite military expertise is revealed to be nothing more than a thin veneer hiding a distinctly shabby amateurism.

This is strikingly demonstrated during Chuck’s first attempt to free the hostages. Neglecting to check how many terrorists they’re up against the raid ends in an unmitigated fiasco. In reprisal, the terrorists unceremoniously shoot one of the hostages in the head. Well, at least now we know they’ve got guns too.

Still, this is minor bungling when compared to Chuck’s big rescue plan after the hostages are moved from the jumbo jet to a fortified compound. To ensure the enemy will be taken completely by surprise, he plots a clandestine raid to be carried out in the dead of night.

All hostage situations must include a nun and a priest

Unfortunately, this sneak attack involves staging the biggest beach landing since D-Day. Trucks, jeeps and motorbikes clank noisily ashore, before rattling with an awful din through the streets of the Lebanon. Short of hiring Fatboy Slim to do a set of ‘bangin’ tunes’ from the back of one of the trucks (‘Make some noise, Beirut!’), it’s hard to see how they could have been less discreet.

But, I hear you cry, what about the exploding helicopter scene? Well, my chopper conflagration-fancying friends, I have shocking news to impart: it is, incredibly, the very first event in the film.

It’s true. Delta Force opens with a shot of a stationary helicopter in an empty barren desert. For a few seconds, nothing happens. Then the helicopter suddenly explodes. No exposition, no explanation, no introduction. One minute it’s there, the next it’s been blown to smithereens.

It’s a hell of a way to start a film. And as an attention grabbing statement of intent for a film, it’s as ballsy as any red-blooded exploding helicopter fan could wish for…

 Artistic merit

…but, having said that, I’ve mixed feelings about this helicopter explosion. On one level it’s the single greatest opening to a film I’ve ever seen. The chopper fireball is the very first thing to happen and I wouldn’t be running this website if the idea of helicopters exploding immediately at the start of a film didn’t thrill me in ways which would probably disturb you if I elaborated on them.

But on another level, it’s an unsatisfying experience. Like many of my own first teenage forays with girls, it’s all climax and no foreplay. And it’s so very brief. (Yes, the teen analogy till applies.) Ultimately the whole scene doesn’t really work.

Exploding helicopter innovation

At just five seconds into the film, Delta Force holds the record for the earliest exploding helicopter.

Do passengers survive?

Yes. Norris heroically runs back to the exploding helicopter to save a soldier who’s trapped onboard. There’s a conspicuous absence of camaraderie from the rest of the Delta Force troops though, who seem completely content to let their colleague burn to death. Maybe they just didn’t like him very much.

Positives

Smart suit + moustache + urbane manners = terrorist

In recent years any thriller with a Middle Eastern setting has seemed duty bound to have a hideously baffling plot as anyone who’s struggled through Syriana and Green Zone can attest.

Refreshingly, Delta Force makes commendably few intellectual demands on the viewer. Two thousand years of bloody and complex religious, national and political disputes are distilled to a simple message: Chuck Norris good, terrorists bad.

Delta Force aspires to nothing more than uncomplicated, patriotic tub-thumping fun best evidenced by the jingoistic ending which sees all the now rescued hostages singing the star spangled banner while drinking Budweisers. Not wanting to be left out I started chanting “U-S-A, U-S-A” at the screen.

Negatives

Clueless as they are, Delta Force by no means hold a monopoly on ineptness in this film. No, credit where it’s due – the terrorists also display a finely-curdled crapness as they prepare to hijack the plane.

Hilariously, one of the criminal hijacking masterminds turns out to only have a standby ticket. Since the flight’s full, he’s not allowed to board and is left stranded in the airport terminal. Don’t worry lads, I’ll hijack the next one.

Favourite quote

One plucky hostage manages to find the brighter side of being caught up in a hijacking: “Whatever happens, we’ll always remember our silver wedding anniversary.”

Interesting fact

Oddly, Delta Force is a significant film for a number of actors. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot future Hollywood stars Kevin Dillon and Liam Neeson in uncredited roles as fresh faced Delta Force soldiers.

While they were at the start of their careers, Delta Force proved to be the end of Lee Marvin’s. Possessed of a lean, gaunt look in his heyday, here Marvin exudes all the health of an animated corpse. Which isn’t far from the truth, as the great man died shortly after making this film.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on The Delta Force. Listen via iTunes, Podomatic, Stitcher, Acast and YourListen. Or even right here.

The Expendables 2

If The Dirty Dozen and Cocoon had ever had a drunken one-night stand, this is what the baby would have looked like.

The Expendables 2 (2012) is such a bizarre mash-up of styles and demographics – oh-my-aching-sides oldie gags and uber-violence – that it frequently leaves the viewer perplexed: “Aw, look at all the old people, still so sprightly and full of zest. Wait no, what’s he doing? Oh god no, he just shot somebody in the face!”

Following the respectable box office of The Expendables (which proved the adage: it’s never too late to put old dogs through exactly the same tricks), old stroke-features Stallone here rounds up the boys again.

Eschewing a state pension, the 66-year-old has gathered Schwarzeneger (65), Willis (57), Lundgren (55), Van Damme (52) and junior partner the Stath for another medley of tongue-in-cheek heroics and stomach-churning blood spillage.

(To fully appreciate just how downright weird all this is, just consider that cameo assassin Chuck Norris, at a coffin-brushing 72-years-old, is a full 20 years older than Cocoon actor Wilford Brimley was when he starred as a pensioner in that film.)

The ‘plot’, in which the team rescues some plutonium, blasts the baddies and saves the obligatory village, is so by-the-numbers we need not go into detail here. What really impresses is the gusto with which the screenplay (co-written by Sly) embraces every possible action movie cliché.

What, the team has to do an impossible mission or GO TO JAIL? You mean, the young buck who’s doing ‘one last job’ to raise enough money to marry his sweetheart ACTUALLY DIES? You’re kidding me: the glamorous female who’s foisted on the reluctant team turns out to be so kick ass and gutsy she eventually WINS THEIR RESPECT?

It sounds awful, but it actually works. The whole movie is essentially one gigantic wink to the audience, a cinematic karaoke of old action movie favourites. This can become wearing when the action pensioners repeatedly blurt out self-reverential soundbites (‘I’m back’, ‘Yippee-ki-yay’ etc) but it’s mostly cartoonish good fun.

In fact, the film only really falters when it tries to up the drama and get serious. Chief villain Jean Claude Van Damme’s opening soliloquy – a rambling, four-minute homily to ‘respect’ – is literally incomprehensible, and there’s a palpable sense of relief when he finally shuts up and kung-fu kicks a dagger into someone’s chest. (Yes, he really does.)

Despite all the guns, bombs and crashing planes, the most fascinating view on display – especially on the big screen – is the cast themselves. Stallone, arrested several years ago for smuggling his personal supply of human growth hormone into Australia, scarcely even looks human anymore.

He alternately wears a thick, black woollen beret and his own hair, but you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. The bulging veins on his forearms are just terrifying, and those HGH injections haven’t quite reached down to his legs, which are now comically old man skinny. It’s like there’s two different bodies waddling across the screen – Tom Hardy on top and Steptoe at the bottom.

Arnie, meanwhile, looks like a semi-melted waxwork of his younger self, his face tight and surgical-shiny in places, but hanging off his jowls at the sides. Van Damme wears sunglasses for 95 per cent of the time – even while underground – presumably because there are bags under his eyes you could carry your shopping in.

Of the others, Bruce Willis merely looks even more like a smug testicle, while septuagenarian Chuck Norris – with his magnificently white teeth and lustrous brown beard/hairdo combo looks like a human beaver. It’s like he’s accidentally strayed into the action from an Island of Dr Moreau set next door.

At a sprightly 45-years-old, it’s left exclusively to the Stath to provide all the actual action in this action movie. Director Simon West shows a good sense of the ridiculous for the most part with this movie (he made Con Air, after all), but his choreography of the fight scenes is lamentable. The clunky edits make abundantly clear that the baddies are obediently queuing to get biffed one at a time; I’ve seen queues in Lidl’s with more sense of danger.

Still, that’s a minor gripe about a largely entertaining yarn which, in its eagerness to please, throws us an exploding helicopter in the very first scene. Our crew, armed with all kinds of armoured vehicles, bust into a walled compound to rescue Arnie.

Before you can say human growth hormone injections, Sly’s somehow on a low rooftop with his tanky vehicle, which has a motorbike strapped to the back. A chopper swings low, ready to fire, so Sly revs up the bike and sends it blasting into the helicopter cockpit, causing an inevitable crash and, yes, explosion.

Exploding helicopter innovation

The driving-a-moving-automobile-into-a-chopper gambit has been used before (Willis in Die Hard 4 provides a worthy demonstration of the form) but the good thing about this example is that it doesn’t make a meal out of things. There’s no Michael Bay multiple-cut, slo-mo, shite CGI business going on: it just happens. One minute Sly’s shooting someone repeatedly in the chest, then he throws a motorbike at a helicopter, then he punches someone else to death. Simple.

Positives

I love how, with each movie, less and less of what Sly says is comprehensible, especially when he’s angry. There’s a whole scene where he castigates Bruce Willis down a walkie talkie that I didn’t catch a word of.

You can picture the director asking him to go through it seven times before just throwing his hands into the air. In the latest Batman film, Tom Hardy often can’t be understood because he’s wearing a big mask: Sly now achieves much the same effect with just the burden of his own slopey mouth.

Negatives

The gutsy woman character is – probably deliberately – neither that young nor that glamorous, presumably to avoid providing too sharp a contrast with her doddering co-stars. However, she is one cack actress. When you’re in a scene with Sly where he’s stutteringly growling out some half-baked ‘backstory’ and YOU’RE the one whose acting is noticeably bad, it’s time to start worrying.

Favourite quote

Van Damme’s colossally nonsensical: “Without respect, we are just people.” What?

Interesting fact

The collective age of the main cast a very high figure indeed that would have impressed you if I could have been bothered to work it out.

Review by: Chopper

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on The Expendables 2. Listen via iTunes, Stitcher, Acast, Spotify or right here.

Invasion USA

The Cold War. A chilling, decades-long period of history when the world lived under the twin shadows of nuclear destruction and Chuck Norris’ implausibly huge Hollywood stardom. Looking back, it’s hard to know which of these two factors marked a more terrifying sign that we were facing the end of the world.

So, in a Cold War-era action movie, what could be better than a scenario where the Soviets are hell-bent on the imminent destruction of America and the only person who can prevent Armageddon is – Chuck Norris! Writes itself, really.

Our Chuck plays Matt Hunter, a retired CIA agent who’s traded ‘wet work’, ‘dead drops’ and covert surveillance to become an alligator farmer. Apparently, the skills are very transferable.

Seemingly content with his business supplying gator skin to the handbag industry, Chuck’s tempted back into the CIA fold when he learns that his nemesis – a Soviet agent named Rostov (Richard Lynch) – is plotting to destroy America.

Rostov’s dastardly plan involves tricking the USA into destroying itself. Flooding the country with hundreds of saboteurs, Rostov organises a co-ordinated wave of seemingly motiveless terrorist acts. With the authorities unable to stop the carnage, the country begins to disintegrate as the good citizens of ‘Uncle Sam’ turn against each other.

With chaos on the streets, it’s up to Norris to stop Rostov before America collapses altogether under the weight of its own rotten, decadent, bourgeois, capitalism.

Quite why the CIA believe Norris is the only man who can protect western civilisation is never made clear. They're convinced he's the only one who can find Rostov. But given that Chuck's search mostly involves going into bars and asking, "Where's Rostov?" it's hard to fathom why no-one else could manage the job.

Still, it does allow us to spend plenty of time in the company of Chuck. He’s in fine form here, resplendent in full beard and rocking a bold ‘double denim’ outfit. Tricky to pull off at the best of times, here it makes the Chuck-ster look like a kung-fu Shakin’ Stevens.

It’s also a joy simply to look at Norris, quite the oddest looking man in Hollywood. He looks like what might have happened if a lion forcibly had sex with a squat female bodybuilder. It’s a crying shame he was never cast in the film he was made for: The Island of Dr Moreau. They’d have saved a fortune on make-up.

Never the most naturalistic actor, Chuck compensates by giving a pared down performance, much like Charles Bronson in his better work. As a result, he’s surprisingly effective – although there are some clunky moments where his utter lack of empathy with his dialogue jars the ears. (The average Spanish tourist, enquiring about the nearest facilities with the aid of a phrase book, would possibly convey more emotion than the monosyllabic Norris.)

However, given that Chuck does indeed single-handedly stop a Soviet invasion of the USA, surely this film cannot fail to be anything other than a slam dunk classic? How can a film where Chuck Norris spectacularly shoots up a shopping mall and dramatically saves a school bus of kids be bad? Especially when the climax involves Norris and Rostov going head-to-head armed with only a couple of rocket launchers.

Unfortunately, in the cold, dead hands of director Joseph Zito, badness is entirely possible.

Each breathless action set-piece is punctuated by long, arse-numbing, brain-melting periods of complete tedium where nothing, absolutely nothing, happens. It’s the sort of film Samuel Beckett would have walked out of on the grounds it ‘was dragging on a bit.’

The opening to the film is particularly execrable. Zito spends an ungodly 40 minutes setting up the plot, when it could easily have been done in ten. Enraged by the slack editing, I started to fantasise about doing my own cut of the film, then slamming it down in front of the man and declaring, “This is how you direct a Chuck Norris film!... Oh, and by the way, I‘ve taken most of the bits with Chuck Norris out.”

Having failed to stake out his directing credentials, I had grave concerns about how Zito would handle the film’s key scene – the helicopter explosion. Surprisingly, he makes a decent fist of it.

Towards the climax of the film, Norris comes across the villain’s getaway chopper parked on the roof of a building. On spotting Norris, the pilot desperately flips switches on the dashboard to start up the rotors. Unfortunately for the doomed pilot, the only thing slower than the opening to a Joseph Zito film, is starting up the engine to a helicopter.

Chuckie therefore has ample to time to put the rocket launcher he’s been handily lugging around with him to good use. Hoisting it to his shoulder, he aims and fires, blowing the helicopter to pieces.

Artistic merit 

Screen-filling fireball, good, flaming post-explosion wreckage: Zito ticks a lot of boxes, but the whole thing is lacking in inspiration. Still, while it’s hard to get excited about a scene where Norris destroys an unarmed, stationary, helicopter from point blank range, I must confess, I did enjoy the cold-blooded overkill with which Norris despatches the chopper.

Exploding helicopter innovation 

Rocket launcher chopper fireball – we’ve seen it before. However, it does remind us of the limitations of helicopters as escape vehicles. Pilots really should take a tip from getaway drivers, and always leave the engine running.

Positives 

You really couldn’t wish for a better villain that Richard Lynch, who plays evil Commie mastermind Rostov. Lynch has a wonderful line in cold, dead-eyed stares which he puts to good use when he‘s about to kill someone. He can also turn up the wattage for stares of unblinking, diamond hard, psychotic malevolence, which he saves in Invasion USA for talking about his hatred of Chuck Norris.

In a juicy sub-plot, Rostov is obsessed by Chuck Norris and tries to kill our bearded friend to settle an old score. Even though he’s planning the downfall of America, he just can‘t bear the thought that Chuck Norris is out there somewhere still alive. I kind of know how he feels.

Negatives 

While the final, rocket-launchers-at-40-paces showdown between Norris and Richard Lynch is undeniably a great moment of over-the-top action cinema, the choice of location leaves a lot to be desired. The climatic shoot-out takes place in a sterile, neon lit office block, and the aforementioned rocket launcher battle is staged in a bland, grey, anonymous corridor.

I guess it was a way of reminding us of the freedoms and liberties that Chuck was fighting for – the inalienable, God given right of every US citizen to do a boring, socially meaningless job for low pay. You almost start wishing the Russkies had won.

Favourite quote

Chuck intones the immortal: “I’m going to hit you with so many rights you’ll be begging for a left.”

Interesting fact 

Sadly, we were denied one of the most bizarre screen pairings of all time in this film. Apparently, Chuck Norris wanted Whoopi Goldberg to play the main female lead. However, the director had other ideas and cast Melissa Prophet instead.

Norris and Goldberg, though. In the same film. The mind boggles.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast show on Invasion USA. Listen to the show on iTunes, YourListen or Podomatic.