Special Forces

Special Forces is a movie you probably haven't heard of and honestly, its not a movie you'll probably hear of again. Its one of those obscure films on Netflix that was probably a direct to video release, or its a foreign film... or both. I think Special Forces was a French film, that's probably why I never saw it.

Special Forces is a French film about a journalist, Elsa Casanova (played by Diane Kruger) who is kidnapped in Afghanistan while she is doing investigative work on the Taliban. Her captor, your stereotypical radical muslim terrorist for the evening (played by Raz Degan) is, again, your stereotypical evil terrorist bad guy with no discernible character traits besides being muslim, being Arab and being a terrorist.

The French Government decides that they're not going to let her be killed by the Taliban so they send their elite special forces unit to rescue her.

Sounds pretty straight forward right? THEN WHY DID THIS MOVIE RUN ALMOST 2 HOURS!?!?!?

Seriously, all they had to do was go get the girl and go home. But then they're radio is destroyed, so they decide that they need to cross the border back in Afghanistan, because I guess they were in Pakistan, in order for them to be rescued.

First off, the military trains for contingencies like this. They know that technology is bound to fail, its bound to get destroyed, that's why they wouldn't just leave them...

But that's what happens.

Anyway, they really rescue her in the first 40 minutes of the film and the rest is this hike across the border and back to safety.

This team is headed up by Djimon Hounsou and Denis Menochet and some other guys but honestly, this movie goes so quickly, is so focused on the action, and gives little to know time to explain characters, that you never really get to know who is who. In short, there's the Djimon Hounsou, the only famous actor, That actor you might get confused with someone else in Denis Menochet, the sniper guy, the other large guy, the guy Diane Kruger falls in love with and the guy who dies first.

I mean I can't really say the movie is absolute garbage. Hounsou and Kruger are good actors and they do well with what they have. The problem is that the script is so barebones and the movie is trying a little bit too hard to show this gritty and violent warzone and sacrifices every bit of character development for gun battles that are in essence really stupid.

I'm not a huge connoisseur of French film so I don't know if this is considered good in Europe. But from what I know of film, this movie is not a very well done film.

I will give the movie credit, while the tactics aren't exactly world class or realistic, this movie is a fun movie if all you're looking for is a lot of shooting and people dying left and right. This movie is over the top, with all the slow motion death scenes you could ever want and all the blood and violence you'll ever need.

The best example of just how little this movie cares about character development is in the villain.

Like I said before, the main antagonist is as stereotypical of a radical muslim terrorist as you're ever going to get. But while every other muslim terrorist in every other movie was a little bit intelligent, this guy is just down right stupid.

They start him off as this cool and calculating villain but when the Special forces team rescue Elsa, this guy just does not let them go. He insists they follow them on foot, and if anybody disagrees with him, don't worry he'll shoot them in the face for no apparent reason. Which I could stand for if there wasn't the part where they go to a village where the protagonists were staying and before the village elder can even say whether or not they were there, he shoots him straight in the face, THEN asks where the reporter is. Oh I'm sure they're going to tell you now.

Overall, he's just dumb.

Frankly, this movie is just a video game that I didn't get to play. Its one long cut scene from a Call of Duty video game that before I could actually pick up the controller, the credits started rolling. I think there's a lot in the style this film is made in that makes it a "French" film, strange cuts of scenes, random passages of time, but it doesn't do anything for me and it doesn't make the movie anything more than it actually is, a war film where its just a betting game about who is going to make it to the end, and who isn't.

The good things about the film? The action (as cheesy as it was) some moments with Diane Kruger or Djimon Hounsou, and when the movie ended. The bad things about this movie? The fast tracked story and character development. The characters who weren't characters as much as they were fingers to pull triggers. And finally, the horrible villain and the fact that this movie, after all the action was done, was boring as shit.

But those are my thoughts on Special Forces. What do you think? Have you ever found a really obscure movie on Netflix, watched it and been surprised on how good it was? Let me know by Commenting and Discussing below! Also you can shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 and you can follow me on Twitter to get updates on movie reviews and news.

I'll leave you with this. Well this movie is kind of a downer, here's something funny. The one good sketch to come out of Mad TV. Stuart! Enjoy!