The Delivery
There is a reason that successful action movies do not star bland Europeans driving blue Volvo station wagons. And there is a reason that when most fans of cinema think of successful action movies, they do not think of director Roel Reiné. The first reason is that people with French names seldom accomplish much worth thinking about, except for that whole Pasteurization thing, and maybe the Statue of Liberty. The second reason is The Delivery. The existence of this film is proof, all by itself, that Europe sucks. Perhaps not all of Europe, but certainly, and in no particular order, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Spain. These are the locations in which The Delivery was shot, and it is here that Roel Reiné’s vision of an action movie is set, a movie interrupted at irregular intervals by a public domain pseudo-techno soundtrack obviously incorporated so that viewers will understand that this movie is hip and cool. Hip and cool it actually isn’t, but The Delivery is at times dull, at other times amusing, and throughout teeth-clenchingly, eye-squintingly disturbing.
Roel Reiné’s masterpiece is what you’d get if Go, Pulp Fiction, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation were all assaulted by French prison escapees and, as a result, had children that birthed mutant creatures who in turn had incestuous relationships that produced a slathering, drooling monstrosity they named The Delivery. As the film opens, a van and the blue Volvo are traveling down a road somewhere in Europe, and the driver of the van, believing himself to be an American taxi driver, is flying at high speeds down the wrong side of the road while listening to music through headphones. He has a minor accident and the van slides down the grassy shoulder of the highway.
The driver exits the van, which, suddenly remembering that it is in a movie, bursts into flames for no reason at all. The Volvo pulls up and we are introduced to three people, two of whom we’ll be stuck with for the entire film.
There’s a guy named Guy, who is so named, I am convinced, because most Europeans are so bland and unremarkable that any European could play this fellow. The script probably calls only for “Some Guy,” which was shortened to “Guy” so the other characters wouldn’t feel awkward calling him by name. Even now, scant minutes after watching the film, I find it difficult to call Guy’s face to memory.
There’s also Guy’s friend, another bland European fellow. He’s so dull, in fact, that even the people who made the movie can’t remember his name. He’s listed in the credits as “Alfred,” but the box in which the video came packaged refers to him as “Albert.” Characters in the movie refer to him by both names, struggling as they are to remember why he’s even in the movie.
Finally, there’s Anna, Albert’s or Alfred’s Hot French Chick wife. She’s no more remarkable than her fellow protagonists, and mercifully disappears for most of the movie. But we’ll get to that.
It seems that Anna, Albert or Alfred, and Guy lost a lot of money in the Van Made Of Gasoline-Soaked Wood Apparently Carrying A Cargo Of Nitroglycerin. This money was owed to a loan shark, who doesn’t appear in the movie and has probably forgotten what the bland Europeans he lent it to looked like. Still, Albert or Alfred and Guy and Anna are very concerned about paying it back, and it just so happens that Anna went to college with psychopathic drug peddlers. She tells Guy, and the husband whose name she can never remember, that all they have to do is call this old college buddy of hers, and they can get money to do “a delivery,” which, Anna promises, will be “risk free.” This is the point in the movie where viewers nod knowingly as they slowly realize why the movie is called The Delivery, even as they become suspicious regarding the alleged “risk-free” nature of the journey to come.
Accompanied by the throbbing and generic soundtrack, our Eurotrash protagonists seek out this helpful drug dealer, a charming fellow named “Spike” whose aide, a sinister-looking scarred Asian fellow with a penchant for swearing loudly and angrily in Japanese, should have tipped off our protagonists that Spike is anything but pleasant. After confusing everyone with a long, boring speech about Europe, Spike is more than happy to invite the trio to transport his 25 million dollars worth of Ecstasy, but, he apologizes, he must take Anna hostage to make sure Guy and Albert or Alfred deliver the goods as promised.
Spike is a man who likes elaborate plans. You would think the simple task of transporting Ecstasy from European Country A through European Countries B and C to European Country D would be pretty simple. But Spike, who probably insists on ordering pizza from the Pizza Hut in Southern Wales and having it relayed by private messenger through Germany, Outer Mongolia, and Yemen before warming it in a microwave set up on a rolling cart along the median of a highway in Amsterdam, has composed an elaborate, circuitous route that includes checkpoints at numerous pay telephones. Guy and Albert or Alfred take the schedule and set out to earn their pay.
One of the reasons that Europe sucks — apart from the proximity of the French — is that in Europe, Volkswagens full of German men and Belgian hookers FALL FROM THE SKY with alarming regularity. So it comes as no surprise to the average viewer when Guy and Albert or Alfred’s trip is rudely interrupted by a Volkswagen that falls from the sky and nearly crushes their vehicle. A German man exits the car, and Albert or Alfred, doing what any one of us would do, runs him over. The Belgian hooker, a woman named Loulou in a leopard print blouse and slutty miniskirt, insists that Guy and What’s-His-Name take her and Injured German Guy along for the ride.
The trio and their bleeding German cargo don’t have to travel far before they encounter Loulou’s boyfriend Marc, an angry, rat-faced little man with a car trunk full of firearms and a knack for shooting people in front of their children. Marc is busy doing just this — shooting a woman who was driving by with her daughter — when Guy And The Gang happen along. There is a lot of shooting, and Guy spends a lot of time shouting “Reverse! Reverse!” Loulou does something to upset Marc, and the Volvo gets ventilated. Our gang escapes, leaving rat-faced Marc to contemplate his next move.
It turns out Belgian hooker Loulou only looks like a hooker. In reality, she and Marc are part of an organization called the AAU, which is dedicated to using terrorism to halt European Unification. Mark and What’s-His-Name are shocked that anyone would care enough about European Unification to write an angry Letter to the Editor, much less bother executing anyone over it. Lou insists that Marc is just such a guy, and he’s probably not too happy with them.
Lou is a real joy to have around. She has an irritating accent (“Thees ees boooolsheet!”), but she can hotwire a car and helps Guy and What’s-His-Name break into a medical supply house and steal morphine for Wounded German Guy. Wounded German Guy responds to the expert medical attention foisted on him by frothing at the mouth like, as Savage Steve Holland would put it, a giant dolphin with rabies. He spews all over the Volvo and its occupants before expiring. The others bury him.
Guy, Marc, and Lou spend most of the middle of the film stealing cars and running from Marc, from whom they’ve somehow stolen a detonator that Marc needs to set off a bomb to kill some European Unification person-or-other. Everyone seems to have a copy of Spike’s Byzantine schedule, and every time our protagonists stop at a pay phone, Marc lights them up with a Steyr AUG assault rifle. The gang stays one step ahead of Euro-currency-hating Marc, though. At one point, they slip through the French border by cunningly disguising their stolen car full of Ecstasy as a bicycle, surrounded by other European bicyclists. The French border guards, busy surrendering to passing German tourists, don’t notice.
During this road trip through Europe, we get to see the full depth of our protagonists. Guy has a philosophical side, it turns out, and in one touching scene tells Albert or Alfred all about the midget in a pub somewhere in Europe that Guy almost killed with a beer glass (accidentally), an act that prompted the angry three-foot midget to place a Gypsy curse on Guy’s love life. “‘You will never be lucky in love,'” Guy laments, recalling the midget’s words and holding his palm parallel to the ground at thigh level. “Cursed by a [bleep]er this high!”
At this point, an already superb film is made superber by the introduction of Ugly European Interpol Detective Lefty, who, in the words of his more handsome assistant, is “obsessed” with catching the members of the AAU. Lefty’s hobbies include picking up hookers and stroking little girls with his prosthetic left hand, vices in which he indulges with alarming frequency in The Delivery. Lefty is also dragging around a wooden briefcase, Pulp Fiction-style, and seems pretty attached to it.
During their travels, Lou, Guy, and Albert or Alfred visit a Rave to shop for guns. It is now my reluctant obligation to warn you of The Delivery‘s unsavory fascination with the body’s orifices. The Rave features — and I am not making this up (oh, how I wish I were) — a naked woman with a miniature cable camera who spends her time at the party doing obscene things with the camera. She pauses in this artistic endeavor long enough to poke the camera in Guy’s direction, and the hapless Guy’s amnesia-inducing countenance is projected on a large Party Screen in the background. Marc, who apparently enjoys the Orifice Cam and is also visiting the Rave, sees Guy on camera and enlists the help of an AAU Henchman to once again attempt the murder of Lou and the boys.
What follows is a rip-off of the famous climax of Reservoir Dogs, the twist being that this one is done with hand grenades. The Rave parking lot gets blown up, and Marc is foiled again. Later, Guy gets to see Lou naked, and still later, they Get It On, all of which makes Guy annoyingly happy for the rest of the movie.
The erstwhile Lefty, who never tires of the hunt for the AAU, does take a break to check into a cheap motel. He buys a hooker for the night, and gets a discount on the price (250 instead of 600) when he flashes his badge. Come morning, the hooker rolls him, steals his wallet, and leaves his prosthetic hand on the night table with its middle finger pointing skyward.
The same cheap motel also hosts Marc and the AAU Henchman. When Marc is distracted, Lou sneaks into the room, ties up the Henchman, and — and again I wish I was making this up, and please have the children leave the room — sodomizes him with a Walther P38 until he gives up the location of the aforementioned bomb. When Marc returns, there is a scuffle, and that Walther eventually ends up in Marc’s face, at which point I shuddered with such severity that my glasses fell off.
The Delivery starts to make its point at a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, at which Marc is waiting yet again to kill Lou and the boys. They accidentally run over the phone booth, crushing Marc, but the phone still works, so they get their last call from Spike. They end up at a nearby monastery, where Scarred Asian Person clubs them all and ties them up. They are reunited with Anna, and Spike joins the party with a chainsaw, intent on turning them all into pretentious yet chunky European soup.
Spike — who is forced to delay his murderous rampage when the chainsaw runs out of “petrol,” and who is further delayed while trying to set the saw’s choke — is confronted by Lefty, who mistakenly believes the lot of them to be the AAU terrorists he as been obsessively hunting Moby Dick-style. He has replaced his prosthetic hand with an elaborate bladed weapon, having seen the Bruce Lee film Enter The Dragon one too many times. Poor Lefty is cut off in mid-vengeance-speech when Marc’s bomb, recovered by Lou and the boys and placed in the Ecstasy shipment, explodes and turns all the bad guys into a fine red mist. The suddenly-airborne bladed prosthesis nearly decapitates Guy — or maybe it was Albert or Alfred — but our protagonists all escape.
The movie ends on a happy note, with Guy, Albert or Alfred, Lou, and Anna discovering that the Ecstasy has somehow survived the blast. Thrilled at the prospect of becoming full-fledged drug dealers, they ride off into the sunny European afternoon. During the credits — over which dissonant rap music plays incongruously — we see a small window in which our protagonists drive an expensive car along the beach. The message? Ecstasy does make you happy, chain-saw wielding madmen and knife-handed, hooker-buying Interpol agents notwithstanding.
The Delivery: An hour and forty minutes of my life, gone forever.
The following is a GENUINE e-mail I received from the director of The Delivery:
Date: 9/05/2002 03:11:16 +0200
From: Roel Reiné <roel@rebelfilm.com>
To: Phil
Subject: Regarding PhilElmore.com
> This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
An interesting review you wrote on you¹re site regarding my movie. I hope you saw the making off on the DVD, or listened to the directors commentary on the DVD, maybe you then understand why I made this movie and in what kind of situation. Maybe it will be an more usefull spending of you¹re time.
I hope you will have the time to watch my next movie, ŒADRENALINE¹. It will be finnished at the end of this year.
Grt
Roel Reiné