The Delta Force (1986) Revisited: Action Movie Review

When terrorism strikes and Americans abroad are in danger, the Delta Force comes to the rescue. Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin save an oddball cast of seventies character actors in this weird but slick disaster film/ action flick mashup – so jump on your rocket-powered motorbike, feather your mullet and get ready to ride with The Delta Force!

If you’ve been watching Reel Action or any of our series here on JoBlo Originals, you’ve undoubtedly heard of The Cannon Group. In the 1980s, Cannon, run by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, were the specialists in B-action movies. Made on the cheap, these films had higher production values than other exploitation movie machines from that era, such as the non-stop onslaught of action coming from Italy or the Philippines. They were real movies and flicks like their Ninja trilogy, including Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja and Ninja III the Domination, plus the American Ninja series and, of course, Breakin’, made a lot of money for comparatively little overhead. 

Yet, in the mid-eighties, the Go-Go Boys, as they were less than affectionately called by the Hollywood press, had bigger aspirations, signing on directors like Jean-Luc Goddard and John Cassavetes to make art films. Some of these movies, such as Andrei Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train, were actually good – like LEGIT good, not “good for a Cannon movie.” 

One such film is Menahem Golan’s The Delta Force, from 1986, which was one of Cannon’s biggest films to date. Based on the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, the film melds effective docudrama style with over-the-top Hollywood fantasy, as the second half of the film imagines a Delta Force raid that never happened and seems loosely based on the real-life Raid on Entebbe, which Golan himself made a film out of called Operation Thunderbolt.

Join us as we look back at The Delta Force on this edition of Reel Action, which is written and narrated by Travis Hopson, edited by EJ Tangonan, and produced by Chris Bumbray and Adam Walton. Watch previous episodes below and let us know what you think of The Delta Force!