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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 26 November 2011
This a movie review of SPECIAL FORCES. |
“One hour of glory beats an eternity of anonymity,” Tic-Tac (Benoît Magimel)
Imagine a French Jerry Bruckheimer-style action-war film, with all the negatives and positives that conjures up. There is the bombast and jingoism, and vapid characterisation on the one hand, but spectacle and big set pieces on the other. SPECIAL FORCES opens like something out of BLACK HAWK DAWN with a squadron of helicopters entering Kosovo in a mission to grab a war criminal for trial. He is extracted in a hilariously over-the-top way, with he and his captors hanging from a helicopter. Wasn’t there time to land the thing and pile everyone in? I’m probably being churlish now, because at the time it was a guilty pleasure seeing such craziness.
Imagine a French Jerry Bruckheimer-style action-war film, with all the negatives and positives that conjures up. There is the bombast and jingoism, and vapid characterisation on the one hand, but spectacle and big set pieces on the other. SPECIAL FORCES opens like something out of BLACK HAWK DAWN with a squadron of helicopters entering Kosovo in a mission to grab a war criminal for trial. He is extracted in a hilariously over-the-top way, with he and his captors hanging from a helicopter. Wasn’t there time to land the thing and pile everyone in? I’m probably being churlish now, because at the time it was a guilty pleasure seeing such craziness.
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We are then introduced to the ridiculously alluring Diane Kruger, playing courageous journalist Elsa, in Kabul, Afghanistan attempting to uncover atrocities. How is this elite group led by Djimon Hounsou’s Kovax (and including Benoit Magimel’s Tic-Tac) going to cross paths with Kruger’s lead? It doesn’t take too much guesswork. A ruthless warlord, Zaief, captures Elsa and the French President says to his committee that he doesn’t want to see a Frenchwoman decapitated on TV. There’s only one group close enough to rescue her!
What elevates SPECIAL FORCES above a straight-to-DVD release, apart from the action, are two-fold: the charisma of Kruger, Magimel and the awesome Hounsou; and secondly, the fact that the film has three subgenres rolled into one – men on a mission, chase thriller and survival pic. However, looking at the subgenres, there is no real originality, and the dialogue coming from a baddie’s mouth like “Western women are stronger than you think!” doesn’t help the movie stay in the mind.
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