Menahem Golan melds a Chuck Norris action spectacle with the disaster film genre in The Delta Force. The story is based upon the June, 1985 hijacking of a TWA jet, where passengers were held at gun-point by terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon. The film re-enacts various real life incidents from the crisis an American serviceman is beaten to death, a terrorist holds a gun to the pilot's head as the pilot is being questioned by reporters while depicting the tension aboard the plane and the agony of the passengers, held under the threat of death by the terrorists. The Delta Force, a crack anti-terrorist commando group, is preparing to rescue the passengers. Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin) is the grizzled commander of the task force; his best soldier is Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), who was planning to retire but is called back into action for one last heroic stand against terrorism.