Special Forces

Director Isaac Florentine's follow-up to his cult hit, U.S. Seals 2 revisits

America's military with more Hong Kong style action and martial arts. Budgeted at a mere $1.3 million, Special Forces manages to push the limit on action

filmmaking within a grimly patriotic story set in the shadow of the bloody

Bosnian-Serbian conflict.

Although unrelated to U.S. Seals 2, Marshall R. Teague returns, this time to

headline the film as Major Don Harding, in addition to acting as military advisor. He's the real deal when it comes to portraying a no-nonsense military officer. His mostly non-emotive persona, echoed by hisfellow team members offers a

nice stabilizing force to ground the stylized action.

Wendy Teller (Daniella Deutscher) is an American photo-journalist in

theEastern European country of Moldavia who stumbles upon local military

forces executing villagers. The commander is a veteran of the Bosnian War

named Hasib (Eli Danker) who captures the woman and attempts to exchange

her for captured war criminals. Its a bad call as the only response he gets is Major Harding and a team of Army special forces flown in to rescue her. Once

down, they settle in to discover her whereabouts with the aid of a local

schoolteacher and a seasoned SAS operative named Talbot (Scott Adkins). A

bitter, past encounter with Hasib fuels Harding's desire for revenge as well as to save the journalist. But after an attempted rescue is thwarted, his team members are either killed or captured. Armed with lethal martial arts ability, Talbot steps in to assist Harding in completing the mission.

Director Isaac Florentine has toned down the stylized action for this film while retaining the excitement of previous efforts. His credits include directing 70 episodes of the popular children's action series for television, the Power

Rangers. This fact and his love for modern Japanese action filmmaking in

general has led to his past use of exaggerated sound effects and camera work

suitable for genre filmmaking, but often at odds when paired with real-world

scenarios. Initially, martial arts combat is used sparingly and with quicker results in neutralizing targets, more in keeping with real combat training. This limited display of hand-to-hand combat may come as a bit of a disappointment to some, but the film adequately compensates in two ways. First, there is relative

newcomer Scott Adkins, who plays the Special Air Service operative. He's

appeared in smaller roles in films such as Extreme Challenge (2001) and The

Highbinders (AKA The Medallion). This could be considered his first breakout

performance as a martial arts star and an impressive one at that. This leads to the second compensation for action buffs, the end fight. You know its coming. The lead villain's sidekick, who does little else throughout the film is present for the sole purpose of taking on Adkins. This scene is outstanding and features the highly competent choreography of Akihiro Noguchi, another Power Rangers

veteran. But this is no kid's stuff. Scott's kicking ability and range of motion are outstanding. The fight is fierce, extended, and only briefly interrupted by

Teague's less potent, but solid brawl with Eli Danker. There may be more

gunplay and explosions than anything else, but Adkins' two or three fight scenes are good enough to warrant martial arts fans taking more than a passing

interest. Any way you slice it, Florentine, himself a martial artist, is clearly committed to filming some of the best martial arts scenes outside of Hong Kong. Its all the more impressive given that he's doing it on a small budget and in an industry not always receptive to allowing quality martial arts in their films.

Special Forces also scores points for it's ambitions. The film begins with a

sobering mass execution of innocent civilians by machine gun. To know that

similar acts have actually occurred in numerous countries and in many conflicts, especially in recent years, sets this film apart from your standard independent action film. This was written after 9/11 and was originally meant to be set in Afghanistan, putting it in touch with the fight against terrorism. Due to a change of plans, location shooting moved to Lithuania and the film's backdrop became ethnic cleansing. The authentic setting and the assistance of the local military further raise the scale of the film.

Depicting the role of America's special forces to any degree of authenticity

presents many challenges and this cast and crew surmount some of them. But

in the end, Special Forces remains a stylized action movie first by giving way to heroic fights and even bigger fireballs. For perspective, the Navy Seals actioner Tears of the Sun starring Bruce Willis shares the same fate on a $70 million

budget. The small budget is a limiting factor, but quality fight choreography, decent acting, and a notable action performance by Scott Adkins makes this

effort Florentine's best yet.

Because here is everything what Special forces soldier can show.Great shooting and good cover from bullets cover,excellent martial arts performance tragedy about getting as Hostage and be scared for live!OK the best what I liked it is the operations what was planed in night as cover of the dark.It's like real Special forces team.And they also disarmer the bad guys with martial arts because they are economic their bullets .That's cool.Bud thing what I unlike is enemy soldiers bad shooting technique's and bad choreography.But only of them only was good Zaman(Vladislavas Jacukevicius) and Hasib(Eli Danker) they showed some good shoots to the enemies but other soldiers can not hit any shoot.And Talbot(Scott Adkins)who arrived with impressive shoots and martial arts performance.It's looked excellent!! But here was Isaac Florentine one of the best of his films.He got old and known action stars.Who do't know Marshall Teague or also Tim Abell.But most best job in martial arts showed famous English action star Scott Adkins.Who's one of the best action stars today.Also I liked how stuntman Vladislavas Jacukevicius showed athletic moves in the film.But he can not get be famous maybe later.But in Special forces all mentioned or not guys showed excellent film about Special forces!!

This movie is for people who just like to watch movies and be entertained and are not looking for realism or historical accuracy. Its a movie. Its fantasy. It plays like an older Hong Kong action flick and its stupid bonkers fun. If you like this then I would recommend U.S. Seals II & Ninja with Scott Adkins from the same director. Really good cheesy fun for action cinephiles.

[Note that there are 2 different direct-to-video movies named "Special Forces". One of them stars Daniel Bernhardt (Bloodsport sequels, Matrix Reloaded) and has a black & white cover. This one stars Marshall Teague and is a bit newer.]

I cannot believe it. Isaac Florentine's "Special Forces" may be the first low budget, direct-to-video action movie to succeed in satisfying the military/gun nuts, the martial arts fans, and general action fans all at once. It's even fairly well-made in terms of direction and production value.

First, there is plenty of gunplay and it manages to look vaguely authentic. The soldiers use proper shooting stances, keep their fingers out of the trigger guard, move & cover semi-relistically, and, unlike most low budget 'spec ops' movies, it looks as if the firearms were chosen because they were credible as US special ops weapons and not because they were the only ones available to the production. I wonder if this is due to Marshall Teague? On the special features of the Criterion Collection DVD of "The Rock", Teague is seen with a real Navy Seal demonstrating realistic weapons handling. Perhaps he brought this knowledge & training over to this film? On an even more pedantic note, several of the scenes where the soldiers were undercover in town reminded me of the fictional novels of Dick Marcinko, the Navy Seal legend turned best-selling author (Rogue Warrior, etc). Playing mind games and staredowns with the goons, evading tails, etc. A bit of a nice touch if you're familiar with Marcinko's work, though obviously it may be a completely unintentional similarity.

Second, the martial arts fights are very good! The final battle is blazing fast, energetic, and brutal. Whoever choreographed it certainly knows the specific rhythms and timing of a good Hong-Kong-style fight scene. The hand-to-hand fights are kept mainly to the latter half of the film. Before that, there are some quick takedowns and exchanges where you can see glimmers of this HK-style flair, but they are kept low-key so that they simply add a bit of energy to the proceedings without constrasting too much with the realistic gunplay.

Lastly, Florentine's direction is solid. He knows how to shoot and edit an action scene for both clarity and excitement. Thank goodness that he's not one of those MTV directors who feels the need to cut every half-second, chopping up every action scene into an incoherent blur. When so much work has gone into staging the action scenes, it's nice that he lets them play out clearly on screen. The non-action scenes are handled competently as well. There's an occasional bit of visual style here and there, but basically he just keeps things moving along and rarely if ever looks amateurish. You could call it a smooth professionalism. They also make great use of their Eastern European locales. It's scenic and absolutely believable for the story.

Overall, "Special Forces" is an enjoyable action flick featuring an unusual amount of detail & competence dedicated to the staging of its action scenes. If you're familiar with the direct-to-video military action genre, this is certainly one of the better ones.

This is certainly the most awful movie ever done. The action scenes are expensive and ridiculous, five guys fight an army in open field with a van.

A helicopter is destroyed and the same army who did it can't destroy the van.

The enemies jump in the air ridiculously when shot, a guy kills a lot of people with a punch in the stomach or opening a door strongly against them.

The acting on this film is terrible, the direction is horrible.

I'm out of adjectives, I've just seen it and came here to comment.

I dare anyone to see the whole movie.