Special Forces

For top-notch action from the Middle East, there’s Black Hawk Down. For getting to know people while journeying through the Himalayas towards freedom, there’s The Way Back. Special Forces is a French hybrid of those two films – though it’s not exactly boring, it has unremarkable action scenes and a plot that’s about as deep as a puddle in the Afghani desert. It tries to forcefully milk our emotions by killing characters it tells us nothing about. It’s just shallow kitsch with a nice acting ensemble. (01/02/2012)

Tears of the Sun in the French style - even the unit commander is rough and bald (not Bruce Willis, but rather Djimon Hounsou). The first hour is full of quite well shot and gripping shootouts, the members of the unit have plenty of sarcasm and poke fun at each other, and the Taliban are not outright scary, but they do at least command respect. The second half, with the trudge through the Hindu Kush, during which it is fortunately (for the viewer) revealed that the armed tough guys are not nearly as immortal as they pretend, is sensational too, though in a very different way. Diane Kruger was excellent, even more beautiful than usual without make-up. (28/03/2013)

Part of French cinema has always admired overseas production and clearly drew inspiration from Hollywood and its commercial trends. Some films simply cannot deny their ambition to catch up with and surpass their models, and Special Forces clearly draws from American patriotic and militarism-saturated films about perfect war professionals who love their country and are always willing to stand up against overwhelming odds to save democracy, innocent orphans, or fragile women. I don't think this fairytale is, in fact, not offensive because its dullness did disturb me a bit and I considered it a perfect waste of time in the end - and I certainly didn't have high expectations. It's a dull shooter saturated with sentiment and, above all, an enormous amount of pathos, and it's poorly shot and edited with distinctly black-and-white characters. It takes itself deadly seriously, while the only chance to sell this abomination would be to lighten it up because it truly cannot be taken seriously. I didn't like the Rambo films even when I was a teen, and over the years, that feeling only intensified. Overall impression: 10%, mainly for the presence of Diane Kruger. (10/02/2018)

A decent war film with Taliban starring a likeable Diane Kruger and the cool Djimon Hounsou. France has shown it can handle this genre too and it's not too different from an American production. There's quite a lot of shooting, but it bothered me that the film isn't R-rated and the shootouts aren't that exciting. But the second half switches more into survival and that also decided the final four stars. 70% (08/11/2017)

This movie was recommended to me by Enšpígl and it looks incredibly tough. I mean I really haven’t seen such a tough and manly movie for a really long time. Truth be told, at the beginning, I didn’t understand the plot or almost anything that was going on in the movie. It seems the editor had a nice little line (of coke) because the movie kept switching from one plotline to another really quickly. But then the story, which turns out to be fairly simple, starts unravelling and I was watching actors who portray such great men that you could wipe the sweat off their brows because they really gave it all they had. Naturally, the movie isn’t a men-only affair and Diane Kruger gets involved, who once again showed that no matter what she looks like, she’s still simply great and amazing. By the way, in this movie she looks like she really did just walk through the steppes for many days and nights. But let’s leave that aside. What’s important is the action, and I must say that in this case the editor did a hell of a job, and all that good-guy-quality and manliness, which you don’t get to see so much in movies these days. (19/03/2013)