a5c7b9f00b A 707 aircraft jetliner on its way from Athens to Rome and then to New York City is hijacked by two Lebanese terrorists. The terrorists demand that the pilot take them to Beirut. What the terrorists don't realize is that an elite team of commandos led by Major McCoy (Norris) and by Colonel Alexander (Marvin) as been called into service to eliminate all terrorists on the jetliner and who's involved in the hijacking and try to retake the plane before the terrorists kill all the hostages. After a plane is hijacked by terrorists, The Delta Force are sent in to resolve the crisis. man, how this movie didn't win, like, 17 Oscars, i don't know. this movie has everything...except good acting, good dialog, good direction...but who needs those in a movie that has Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris starring in it!<br/><br/>i mean, come on, it's Delta Force! they spend the first hour and a half of the movie running away bravely whenever danger leers its head...and then they kick major terrorist butt at the end with an unnecessary and gratuitous amount of explosions! never mind the fact that any foreigner in the film has pretty much the same accent, and probably more than one of the Arabs in it are probably actually of Hispanic origin...<br/><br/>Delta Force...they wear their American flag patches with a ridiculous amount of pride, they use blue headlights, they drive vehicles and use equipment that magically appears out of nowhere, and somehow never get shot despite the fact that they have 5,000 rounds being shot directly at them! the main terrorists are quite possibly the worst terrorists ever...i could do a better job hijacking a plane...come on, guys. go back to jihad school. Osama is not happy with your lackluster performances...<br/><br/>if you're looking for a well-thought-through, inspiring film, you won't find it here. if you're looking for laughs and a good time with friends making fun of a very much B-movie...you'll have the time of your life! you'll come away humming the film's pulsing, 80's score, which repeats a good 350 times throughout the film. good times. I have to admit I do love 'The Delta Force', perhaps because it was a favourite of mine as a child or maybe because it's sometimes relaxing to watch a flick which is very rigid in dividing people into black and white, good and evil, and the main focus is providing the audience with plenty of action.<br/><br/>Very loosely based on the true-life 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, 'The Delta Force' sees an airliner bound for America being taken over by Palestinian terrorists, who demand the flight be diverted to Beirut. While the real life event led to the Israeli government being forced to release Islamic political prisoners to appease the hijackers, the hostages on this flight have Chuck Norris to sort everything out. As the hijackers are threatening to kill passengers, the US military send in the elite Delta Force, a team of highly-trained commando led by Colonel Alexander (Lee Marvin) and his second-in-command Major McCoy (Chuck), to retake the plane by force.<br/><br/>This is a film that won't win any prizes for being politically correct since the Islamic terrorists are blatantly depicted to have not one redeeming attribute and are instead nothing more than abusive, greedy thugs who think nothing of slapping around women and hitting old men. That said, surprisingly Hanna Schygulla and George Kennedy, in roles as an air hostess and priest respectively, do give good performances in portraying the idea that not all heroes show their might with guns and martial arts. And there is a saddening insight, until Chuck arrives on the scene, of what it is to be on a hijacked plane as loved ones are separated and people are left fearing for their life and the lives of their loved ones.<br/><br/>However, with Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin in the lead roles, it's obvious from the start that this will be a film primarily involving gung-ho behaviour and over-the-top action from the all-American heroes. Emotion is shoved to the side to make way for the guns, explosions and karate. My favourite example is a scene that sees two or three cars carrying terrorists armed to the teeth and ready for killing only to be stopped by Chuck, dressed in black on his motorbike with a brooding glare! That, and how our team are able to rescue one-hundred-forty-four people (some of whom are strewn across various areas of Buirut) with only two casualties lost on the good guys and Innocent's' team.<br/><br/>Overall though, this film can be quite enjoyable if not taking seriously and is instead treated like the Eighties action flick it is. And, in these post-September 11th times, there is something rather uplifting about the idea that there would be a crack team of specialists able to rescue hostages and shoot the bad guys without breaking a sweat. Certainly, it's almost haunting to reminisce of the days when hostages on-board hijacked planes only had to worry about was when they would get home for dinner rather than whether they panicking over the fear their plane is going to be rammed into a building, killing them and many others. yes, its based on the TWA Flight 847 was an international Trans World Airlines flight which was hijacked by Lebanese Shia Extremists, later identified as members of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, on Friday morning, June 14, 1985, after originally taking off from Cairo, Egypt. The flight was en route from Athens, Greece to Rome, Italy, from where it was scheduled to travel on to London. The aircraft with its passengers and crew endured a three-day intercontinental ordeal during which passengers were threatened and some beaten. Passengers with Jewish-sounding names were moved apart from the others, and another passenger, U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, was tortured and murdered, his body unceremoniously thrown onto the tarmac. Dozens of passengers were held hostage over the next two weeks, until released by their captors after some of their demands were met.<br/><br/>The initial demands of the hijackers included:<br/><br/>the release of the "Kuwait 17," those involved in the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait. the release of all 766 mainly Lebanese Shias transferred to Israel in conjunction with Israel's immediate withdrawal from Lebanon;(a pullout had been underway since January and was already virtually complete) international condemnation of Israel and the United States. and condemnation of the March 8, 1985, car bombing in the Beirut suburb of Bir al Abed earlier that year.The Greek government released the accomplice Ali Atwa and in exchange the hijackers released eight Greek citizens, including Greek pop singer Demis Roussos.<br/><br/>The iconic image of this hijacking was a photograph showing a gun being held to the pilot's head (sticking out of the cockpit window) as the pilot is being questioned by reporters, but it was actually an unloaded gun held by a teenaged security guard who wanted to be on television.<br/><br/>Flight attendant Uli Derickson was widely credited with calming the hijackers and saving the lives of many passengers. Because her German was the only common language with the hijackers, who spoke poor English, she acted as translator and liaison for most of the ordeal.Notably, she defused a tense situation in Algiers when airport officials refused to refuel the plane without payment by offering her own Shell Oil credit card, which was used to charge about $5,500 for 6,000 gallons of jet fuel, for which she later was reimbursed.She also hid the passports of Jewish passengers so they could not be singled out.