The Film
The setup for Special Forces has a ripped from the headlines feel, particularly in the light of the recent death of Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin. Elsa (Diane Kruger) is a journalist working in Afghanistan, she’s meant to leave the country, but, in pursuing one more story before she does, she and her photographer are captured by the Taliban. A group of French special forces soldiers are sent to rescue them, but the mission goes awry, forcing the whole group to miss their pick up and go on the run on foot, to make a treacherous journey across mountains and deserts to safety.
While the film does have a few things to say about the continuing situation in Afghanistan, and about the people in the media who put themselves in harms way, social commentary is very much muted, in favor of an action heavy narrative focused on the team’s efforts to get out of the country and evade Elsa’s former captors, who are tracking them. The Taliban frequently catch up with the team, meaning that action punctuates the narrative at very regular intervals for the first 80 minutes or so. This could quite easily get dull, but director Stéphane Rybojad (a documentarian here making his first fictional feature) exhibits a dedication both to realism and to varied action choreography, which keeps every scene from feeling like a random series of shots of guys shooting guns at each other. I bang on about this ALL the time when it comes to contemporary (particularly American) action films, but I HATE the current fad for shakycam and fast editing. Happily, with Special Forces, Rybojad manages to use these techniques in the way they are supposed to be used; bringing us close to the action and making us feel involved in the moment, without the loss of the scene’s geography, which renders so many contemporary action films little more than collages about shooting.
While it’s not especially deep or probing when it comes to character development, Special Forces just about spends enough time away from the action to allow you to develop a sense of the camaraderie between the group of soldiers, and how and why their attitude to Elsa (who most of them at first seem to see as an inconvenience, and consider her plight to be her own fault) evolves over the journey they take together, and by the end I was invested in the fate of each of these people. That’s also thanks to the fact that Rybojad has managed to get a strong group of character actors on board here. Djimon Hounsou is entirely credible as a soldier (you absolutely do not want to mess with him) and his commanding presence and charisma make him a great fit as the leader of this small group of highly trained soldiers. In the other main roles Benoît Magimel, who I’ve previously seen much more inheld and upper-class in films like The Piano Teacher and The Girl Cut in Two, acquits himself well as the first member of the team to take a shine to Elsa (initially because she looks like Diane Kruger, which is fair enough), while Denis Menochet and Raphaël Personnaz stand out as, respectively, the most and the least experienced members of the team. As the team’s sniper Personnaz gets several really strong scenes, notably one where he’s desperately firing as a group of Taliban bears down on him. Kruger, who, despite much good work in films in several languages over the last few years, still gets less respect than I think she deserves as an actress, is as good as ever here, making a relatively thin character into someone we can root for and sympathise with. Happily neither the script nor the actress allow Elsa to simply be a damsel in distress, and she really comes into her own in the later scenes as the depleted group make a lonely trek through the Himalayas.
Stéphane Rybojad largely eschews studio work and CGI, for a film that feels immediate and real, even when the story is pushing into rather more outlandish territory. Unfortunately he can’t quite resist an unbelievable ending which also pushes the film’s sentiment (which it is occasionally prone to) overboard. On the whole though this is a pretty impressive debut; the settings are spectacular, and Rybojad uses them to fantastic effect, and he manages, most of the time, to combine character and action effectively.
Special Forces is no classic; it’s a little bit straightforward, springing no real surprises, and while there is some character development both the villains and a few of the special forces team remain under developed, this is a particular shame in the case of the villains, because there is a sense that Rybojad and co-writer Michael Cooper want to push their political commentary some more, but it rings a little hollow because of that lack of detail. Still, it’s entertaining, well acted overall, and has some really engaging action scenes, it’s certainly much more rewarding than you’d expect from a straight to DVD actioner.
The Blu Ray
As you would expect from a brand new film, the Blu Ray looks pretty spectacular. The muted colours are well represented, the sharpness of the transfer picks out fine detail in close up, and the picture’s depth means that the locations look fantastic, with both the desert and the Himalayas stretching out into endless distance. The sound, too, seems strong (I’m afraid I can’t speak to dynamics, because I don’t have a surround setup). Gunfire and explosions are suitably impactful, dialogue is clear, even through sound effects, and the quietness of the mountains is also quite striking. Some dialogue is in English, but much is in French or Farsi, and I found the subtitles readable and well paced throughout. Overall this is a very fine transfer that serves the film well.
The special features are surprisingly generous for a direct to DVD release. First up is an 87 minute making of documentary, filmed largely by Stéphane Rybojad, it’s a personal look at everything from location scouting to training the actors playing the soldiers to principal photography. The focus, unusually, is more on the crew than the stars, and this is a worthwhile, more ground level, look at the filmmaking process. A brief interview with the real life special forces member who trained the actors (and appears in the film as part of the team) is fine, but adds little that isn’t already present in the documentary, and five minutes of deleted scenes are fine, but as inessential as deleted scenes tend to be. It’s a nice package, but you’ll only ever come back to the documentary.
