Special Forces starts out seeming like another generic action movie but ends up becoming something far more boring. When a French journalist, Elsa (Diane Kruger), is kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, a French Special Forces unit is sent in to retrieve her. Pretty simple, right? Well yes, but at times the film borders on the totally idiotic.
After rescuing the journalist within the first hour, the movie turns into a chase film, with the soldiers facing-off against an endless army of Taliban, while also being seemingly immortal. The action scenes are incredibly ridiculous, with soldiers taking down Taliban with incredible ease. At one point, I shit you not, the Captain dodges a bullet by slightly moving his head. A few moments later, a rocket launcher hits two feet away from him and he is thrown to the floor without a scratch or even being knocked out. In between the idiotic battle scenes it’s basically a lot walking through the desert and rubbish dialogue that somehow leads them up a mountain as they apparently think this is the best place to run from the Taliban to. The villain of the film is also completely illogical. He kidnaps then hunts for the journalist because she writes an article calling him a monster. Yet throughout the film he kills innocent people for no reason and at one point slaughters a whole town, basically publicising the fact he’s a monster to the whole country.
The director makes several annoying choices throughout, the worst being the constant switching of languages. Within scenes characters can switch from speaking English to French to languages of Afghanistan. As well as making little sense it’s very distracting.
The cast do a terrible job with the material provided. Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) is the best actor in the whole film but this is hardly her best work. She plays a character who is supposed to be tough but she comes across as dull and quite frankly stupid for publishing stories about the terrorist in the first place. The soldiers’ constant grunts and moans make them seem better suited for porn films. In all fairness, the overly masculine dialogue hardly helps at times.
In terms of special features you get a making of ’, which is dull, and a bunch of deleted scenes, which aren’t worth watching. Probably the most interesting feature on the Blu-ray is an interview with the man who trained the soldiers in the film, giving a nice look at the behind the scenes stuff.
Overall Verdict: A dull action movie full of helicopter shots and a lot of wandering through deserts.
Special Features:
Making of
Deleted Scenes
Interview with Marius: Expert Training
Reviewer: Matt Mallinson