Forces spéciales

Starts as the expected showy advertising for French armed forces (I love the genre but I understand it may not be everybody's cup of tea), then masquerades as some attempt at a lame military action storyline... And then before you know it you find yourself emotionally pulled into a story that provides its share of insights into the contemporary meaning of being a professional soldier. Obviously heavy support from the French armed forces to the production enables the attention to detail that provides credible full immersion into the environment through many vignettes. Stunning landscapes make that even better. Sure, a couple of tactical choices and implausible coincidences pivotal to the story look like concessions to the necessities of a Hollywood movie scenario... But I'll gladly forgive that - and the use of music too : the temptations of becoming a documentary or a caricature have been resisted after all, and what's left is an engaging survival story that will catch an audience far wider than the military niche.

If you like war stories, if you like survival, if you like army movies...

Look no further.

This wonderful movie is about a group of 6 special forces, lost somewhere in the Middle East, without communications or vehicles.

They have to walk through the mountains to reach Afghanistan and their base.

The whole movie is not based on the travel, but it takes a big place.

This is an action and emotional film.

There are some good real action scenes and a lot of feelings during the long and hard travel.

I couldn't be bothered to look if this is based on a true story. Nor will I compare this to heroism as seen in American movies of similar genre fair. But I can tell you that with all it's faults and flaws (and there are quite a few), this still manages to grip you, if you have a good surround sound system and a neat television set. Of course that shouldn't be the argument to rate a movie (Bruckheimer would be happy though), but the action is well choreographed, you always know where you are and the actors are not too bad either.

Having said that, I do understand if you feel like you've been cheated when you watch the movie. But don't start asking yourself, why this, why that, it'll spoil your movie experience. And after all, this is just a movie, so don't start comparing it to the real thing! If you do, it'll fail on a major scale!

You get what you pay for and - when compared to Black Hawk Down - the budget for this movie would get you an Oyster card for Zone 1-2 for a month. This isn't Hollywood dollars and it shows.

Some of the scenes are a tribute (or plagiarism) to the Ridley Scott masterpiece. There is a decent opening sequence and the acting is reasonable, but you just feel that you're being dragged into B-movie territory despite wanting it to work.

Weirdly, what really lets down the move is the music. Its all low-end production music and has nothing to do with the supposed location, making it harder to believe it was shot on location.

Had there been more zeros on the production bill, this could have been an eight but it'll need to be a low six I'm afraid.

Co-written and directed by Stephane Rybojad, this debut feature is impressive and remarkable considering the sheer logistics involved in having it filmed in Tajikistan passing off as Afghanistan and its tribal borders where the film was primarily set. Rybojad cut his teeth with countless of documentaries, some of which involved the French special forces, so to say that he brings a degree of realism to the film is an understatement, having first hand knowledge about the weapons and tactics, despite having to weave a fictional tale around it that will appeal to a broad audience.

With a host of rifle weaponry, high-tech equipment and decked to the nines by smaller arms to larger ones like the Super Puma choppers (amongst others) and boasting even an aircraft carrier, some may be quick to claim that the film is nothing but propaganda for the French armed forces. But that can be so far from the truth, because what Rybojad had done is to provide a tale about humanity both good and evil, and the dilemma that anyone entrusted with a life and death situation to deal with almost on a constant basis. With just gun battles alone one may be better off with a computer game, but the story here, no matter how standard and cliché at times it may seem, worked without attempting to do more than it's capable of, knowing its limits and sticking very much to its strengths, despite having its final act a little bit clunky and a pivotal scene that turned out to be quite unbelievable in terms of geography, but with narrative films there's always the element of chance and coincidence otherwise nothing would actually happen.

While it's not everyday that we get to see a French action film, and one based on a uniformed group at that (the last being the GIGN in the film The Assault, which is based on a factual, historical incident), and this one in some ways reminded me of the Hollywood film Tears of the Sun by Antoine Fuqua. Both films feature a group of special forces troopers being tasked with an extraction mission, only to come face to face with a numerically superior opposition, having to battle the enemy while protecting their mark, and having the latter female and strong willed and at times at loggerheads with the mission objective, influencing how the troopers will function as a unit and having to constantly review whether they should just follow orders, or go about on a wider humanitarian mission that doesn't betray the conscience.

There's no Bruce Willis here, but Djimon Hounsou takes the charge as the leader of a group of six men in total tasked with a reconnaissance mission at first to uncover the whereabouts of the kidnapped journalist Elsa (Diane Kruger), before having their mission immediately turned to one of extraction. It may seem like an open and shut, routine mission with highly skilled, trained and equipped men balancing the odds of being numerically disadvantage, if not for Michael Cooper and Stephane Rybojad's story throwing a spanner in the works by taking out all their communications equipment very early on, rendering a change in their LZ impossible, and being left to their own devices to escape from Elsa's Taliban captors who are fast closing in on them. The structure here may seem similar to Tears, but it doesn't come with any requisite twists and turns. In fact the enemy may well be the harsh terrain and sub zero temperatures the group has to battle against, and for those pampered by things blowing up in the first half of the film, this portion on may seem like an anti-climax, especially when the story seemed to lose its tight grip on the plot, and made concessions to allow for closure.

The introduction was what set the stage with a glimpse of how tight the Special Forces work, flying in with their choppers on a mission to capture a war criminal, and a number of set action pieces to whet the appetites of the action junkie from the actual rescue of Elsa and the protection of tribal villagers who had shown them hospitality. But ultimately the story never allows you to forget about each of the characters, giving each some very strong identifiers that you'll feel for them especially since Cooper and Rybojad shows no mercy if any were to slip up and be complacent, never in their intention to build supermen or a super team, even if early skirmishes may seem to suggest something like that. It is this avoidance of caricatures that makes you feel for the safety of everyone each time a shot rings out, and as weapons and ammunition become light, fuses a real sense of danger and fear. The villains however are plainly one-dimensional, even for the chief terrorist Zaief (Raz Degan), who has no lack of scenes to show why he's pure evil and is one to be gotten rid of.

Still, Special Forces ranks up there with the many films from around the world about specially trained men and women in uniform being called upon to put their lives at the forefront in the protection and well being of others, and you can either view this as a purely action flick, or a tribute to the spirit of the such groups, with a stark comment as explained by a character, that it's better to go in a blaze of glory, than to live a life of anonymity.