Delta Force (1986) - By Brian Morton

Film Reviews: Delta Force (1986) - By Brian Morton
Posted on Tuesday, February 01, 2005 @ 09:00:00 Mountain Standard Time by Duane

So, it's the mid-80s and you're looking for a great action movie to go see. It's in between Rambo movies, and Bruce Willis is still a couple of years from being an action star, so who did we turn to? Chuck Norris of course! That's right in the 80s Chuck was far more than simply Walker: Texas Ranger, he was the world's number one action star.

From his debut in 1979 in 'Good Guys Wear Black' until 1993 when Chuck apparently gave up and turned to being a Texas Ranger, he was in over 15 great action movies. Of course some are better than others, that's kinda the nature of that particualar beast, but let's talk about one that just about in the middle of the sequence and it's also just about the best of the bunch. I'm talking about The Delta Force.

This starts out as a pretty accurate depiction of a TWA high-jacking that took place in the mid-east in the early 80s, but then it turns into a kind of 70s disaster movie, it even has Shelley Winters, George Kennedy and Martin Balsam as hostages on the plane, but then it becomes one of the best action/patriotic movies ever made! This is basically the story of The Delta Force which is an elite squad designed exclusively to fight terrorism around the world...sounds like something we could use now, doesn't it?

The leader of The Delta Force is Lee Marvin, here in his last screen role, and when you're led by Lee you know some ass is gonna get kicked! Lee's number two man is Chuck as Scott McCoy (that's a pretty all American name, isn't it?). When the plane is high-jacked, the authorities contact The Delta Force who begin planning how and where to take the plane. They follow the plane in their own C-130 and make the discovery that some of the hostages have been moved into Beirut. Now, it's up to Chuck and The Delta Force to make a daring commando raid on the terrorists headquarters in downtown Beirut.

It's part disaster movie, part spy movie (Chuck even has his own 007-ish motorcycle that fires missles) and part military action movie, it's really got it all! And at the end, as in all good action movies, the good guy and the bad guy square off mano-e-mano to settle things personally. All in all this is one of the best of the Chuck Norris movies and an over all great action movie that worth checking out!