Please don't spend money on this.

Good concept, poorly executed.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Death Before Dishonor is an ultra patriotic and macho 80's action in the same vein as Rambo-First Blood pt.2 and The Delta Force. It is not as good as the films I have just mentioned and is in many ways cliché and little bit on the cheesy side. It is mostly a recruitment poster for the US Marines, but is a good film vehicle for Fred Dryer.(who is best known as Hunter) Death Before Dishonor delivers big on action with some excellent stunts, explosions and shootouts. Fred Dryer may not be the best actor, but he is good with firearms and is athletic and rugged enough to be a good action hero and is convincing as a Marine Corps badass. Director Terry Leonard did a good job as his only gig as director and there is a good support cast with Brian Keith and Paul Winfield. Rockne Tarkington of Black Samson fame did well cast as main baddie Jihad. I remember watching this as a young lad with my father when this originally had its run on cable, while certain elements of the film are dated, it holds up pretty good with most action movies of the same period.

This is so hilarious that the movie is really fun to watch. Here we have the usual stereotypes fighting each other in a fictional middle eastern terrorist nation. The plot is mediocre but the acting is at places really good. Some say that this is the most anti-Arab movie there is, perhaps, but I don't know. I've seen worse anti-Arab and anti -American filth out there. One fun detail is that I for a moment thought I watched Delta Force (1986) when watching this. Same sets. Same Israeli looking Arabs actors. I found this Anchorbay DVD on a yard sale, mint condition. Sadly, the world this movie depicts is close to ours in 2012. War, war and bloodshed......

Fred Dryer stars as a gung ho marine who rounds up the troops and conducts a rescue mission in response to the U.S government's underwhelming response to his commanding officer's(Brian Keith) abduction. Of course it is the Arabs who are behind it and basically this is jingoism at it's most hideously lame. The movie has an interesting cast (Brian Keith, Joanna Pacula, Paul Winfield and Sasha Mitchell) but all of these counterparts are mainly wasted in favor of Fred Dryer's charisma-less performance which consists of grunting and looking deeply ticked off. The movie seems to live in a timeless vortex where repetition rules the day. Everything about the movie is tired and clichéd but the details are so groan inducingly lame and so absurd you just keep rolling your eyes in disdain. All of this would be enjoyable had Death Before Dishonor contained some punch in the action sequences but unfortunately these one sided action sequences feature a three digit body count on one side, while only one good guy dies. At this type of ratio, it is no wonder the movie went into obscurity.* out of 4-(Bad)

I decided to dust this one off and give it another watch. I don't know if that was a good thing. DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR is the quintessential one-sided, "We're good, they're bad" action film. Not since John Wayne's THE GREEN BERETS (1968) have I seen a film so amazingly biased.The scariest thing about DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR is the film's politics. The film is so glaringly jingoistic that it landed itself on the "Worst List" of the book "Reed Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People." While set in the fictional country of Jemal, it is quite obvious who these guys fighting Israel are supposed to be. And who the good guys are. While discussing the complex problems in the Middle East, Ellie asks Burns, "Are you the kind of person who knows what is exactly right and what is wrong?" "Yes," replies Burns before he tells her "don't get us mad." DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR is the kind of film where multiple bad guys can't hit the hero (granted his underlings do die for the cause) with machine guns, but he can blow them up with a rocket launcher while driving a car. Where a "by the book" bureaucrat finds out the hard way (via car bomb) how "savage" these people really are. I think The Phantom of the Movies summed it up best in his review when he said, "it may well be the best 1943 war movie made in 1987." It would be funny, if it weren't so darn frightening.Actually, there is a bit of fun to be had with DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR. Director Leonard, a veteran stuntman, crafts some nice car chases with a rather nice car stunt at the film's end. The film definitely holds its own against its contemporaries such as THE DELTA FORCE (1986) in that regard. Dryer, with visions of Eastwood in HEARTBREAK RIDGE (1986) dancing in his head, is amazingly bland as the tough as nails Marine. Watching him drag around here, it is hard to believe he carried a TV series for so many seasons. You can tell he was hoping for a cross over opportunity into theatrical features, but failed miserably. But there is something inherently funny in his featureless performance. Finally, fans of "what in the world" moments should also keep an eye out for the scene where Brian Keith, being photographed by terrorists, gives them the finger…with his ring finger!