Search - Operation Delta Force 4 - Deep Fault on DVD

Above average for DTV action

K. Ip | The World | 09/26/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"You have to remember that this film isn't competing with the latest John Woo or James Cameron big budget spectacular. It's competing with the loads of shoddy or indifferent direct-to-video movies that come out each year. Among this crowd, Operation Delta Force 4: Deep Fault stands far above them. There is one main reason for this: ENTHUSIASM. The director really seems to be enjoying himself. He keeps the pace up and puts together quite exciting action scenes with rather stylish and varied visuals (lots of low angles, slow mo, tracking shots, etc). And there are a LOT of action scenes in this movie. It runs 96 minutes or so and close to 60 minutes of it is action! One particular scene runs for close to 25 minutes, going from a chalet gunfight to a ski chase to a busy city street explosion and finally to a tank battle! As you might guess, the production values on this one seem a tad higher than most direct-to-video fare. Lots of location shooting, good lighting, and plenty of vehicles. It's not at the level of a big studio of course. Cons are the uneven acting and the weak, illogical story. I consider the latter to be a bonus in this case, as it makes room for the extreme amount of well-executed action during the film. One final note: The action scenes here are not especially realistic and the tactics they use aren't made too obvious. Go see Proof of Life if you want a highly-convincing depiction of a military-style action. Operation Delta Force 5 actually shows the tactics better than 4, but the action scenes are less entertaining (different director).Bottomline, if you like action and don't mind slightly lower-budget pictures, then you could do a lot worse than this film.The DVD is full screen and Dolby 2.0. Picture is very clear and sharp. Colours are reasonably bright. Sound is very loud and active. Not bad at all for a budget disc."