With the success of some big budget military films over the last couple of years it is a surprise that there are not more churning out these days. Needless to say there are a few that come along from time to time and when they stick to a decent formula they can deliver a great movie. The latest taking on the genre is Special Forces starring Diane Kruger and Dijmon Hounsou but does it have the punch and story to make it work?
Special Forces follows a French journalist covering a story about a woman sold to a man when she was a child in Afghanistan. When she is abducted by a Taliban leader the French president sends in a Special Forces team but when things go bad their communications are cut off and they must trek across inhospitable land and try to get to freedom. As military films go, this film delivers no shortage of action, but that is about where it ends. The story is fine, but there seems to be a lot of unnecessary side stuff going on here in an attempt to give more depth to the characters, but actually clutters it up a bit and takes away from the real story of their survival. That being sad it’s nothing that really ruins the movie, but does tend to slow it down at times. The starts out with a bang really setting the tone of what you are hoping to get, but then slows to a crawl for quite a while before finally getting back to the action. The cast does fine, but no one really stands out, but this could possibly have to do with it being dubbed as well so you lose a bit of their actual performance. When they finally start to deliver the action there is plenty and it is pretty well done. While not completely accurate, they clearly made every attempt to get it as close as they could and it’s the one thing that makes this work better than it probably would have.
This is far from a great military action film, but still manages to deliver some entertaining and great action moments that should keep those into the genre happy. Dijmon Hounsou is great as always and is another reason to give this movie a shot.
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