2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

fcerezo-98950 There had been numerous Afgan war movies but this French one really is second to none. Why? It is intensely brutal, realistic and at the end makes it very clear that the news are not fake, the news of those reporters embedded into war conflict are coming from humans sensible to the distress that occurred in the war zone and it is all worth sending the special forces not to rescue just their fellow soldiers but the single person there who writes about the atrocities of the Talibán in that forsaken place.

TdSmth5 In the intro a French special forces team is in Kosovo to get a notorious war criminal. Unlike a US mission that would send maybe 1 chopper and 3 or 4 guys, the French send 5 or 6 choppers and countless guys. For some reason all these choppers don't seem to get noticed by the bad guys. Of course our team gets the guy no problem.Next in Afghanistan, a French reporter interviews an Afghan girl. She's interviewed her before. The girl tells her the story of how she was sold into marriage. Her husband--the big bad local Taliban leader. I guess the Taliban discover that the girl is spilling her guts and when she leaves she's grabbed by dozens of Taliban. Our intrepid reporter decides she's going to rescue the girl with her two local helpers. Of course they immediately are grabbed as well and we meet the Taliban boss who wants her to to recite one of those confessions for the camera. She refuses and one of her helpers gets his throat slashed.Back in Paris, the French government immediately launches a rescue mission--it's our team from the intro. The courageous French president of course doesn't think twice about agreeing to the risky mission to rescue a single reporter. When the team arrives in Pakistan where the captives are being held they witness the Taliban killing the Afghan girl. The team finds the reporter, Elsa, and her local assistant, Amen and rescue them. But the Taliban are on their tail. So they miss the rendezvous with the chopper and are on their own now with hordes of Taliban chasing them.Several firefights and injuries ensue. The team leader decides they will walk to Pakistan!?! Crossing the Hindu Kush mountain range no less!?! Before the border they stop at a village. But soon the Taliban arrive. Amen decides to stay back because he knows the Taliban will wipe out the villagers. So Elsa also decides to help Amen and that forces the entire team to become "humanitarians" as the team leader complaints. Eventually they leave for the snowy mountains and everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. Of course there will be a final confrontation with the Taliban leader.Special Forces is a rather odd French action survival drama propaganda movie. Odd because the action is realistic and great, but then the story is so unbelievable and the heroics so forced and some of the behaviors so nonsensical. We learn very little about our team. At some point before the Afghan mission they are at a party and one of them is presented as a main character, but he's also one of the less likable guys. The team is a strange mishmash of people, most of which don't look the part. The more interesting character is that of the young sniper. Initially, he's got issues killing people it seems, but what choice does he have. I guess French snipers work in solitary not as a team, so he's always off by himself to flank the bad guys.Now, is it fair to ask for realism from a propaganda film? And as far as I could tell from the end credits there was some French government involvement aside from the usual financing. The way this movie was filmed you almost expect them to tell you that it was inspired by real events. And the movie does go beyond just presenting Western heroics versus the evil guys. The Taliban leader does get to complain about Western imposition of democracy at gun point. He does seek consultation with some higher ups and he's made to appear like a loose cannon. Our team also avoids stating political opinions but leave that to the politicians. The movie portrays the Western armed forces' habit of witnessing horrors and not intervening. Then it does a nice job of showing the Afghan village tradition of giving hospitality to all who ask for it, whether friend or foe.It's a bit surprising that this movie precedes the American war propaganda films and unlike these, it's not afraid to harm its characters. Overall, Special Forces has strong first and second acts. But these are short. The long final act/journey gets tedious.

airsnob I don't get it. 6+ is a pretty high rating on IMDb. This movie did not deserve it. Have any of these people seen Black Hawk Down ? Hurt Locker? This just doesn't compare. At all. The character development is bleak. I mean, it's there, but horrible choices of what to show and develop these characters with . The main problem with this movie is that it just isn't realistic. I usually love French movies and was looking forward to this. I think they were trying to copy the American typical action movie. But this is way worse because this isn't what the French do. Or what they are good at. For instance, I would never hand a Frenchman a gun if I could hand him a piece of paper or a pan. They excel in some areas and a vapid movie isn't one of them. The soundtrack is terrible by the way. Almost so bad it ruins the movie. Skip this. Go watch a real war movie.

tolgaozgun Movie started very good by giving sense you are really part of the special forces team. All the humor in order to get over the fear of the operation. End the start of the operation was pretty good it was a simple plan but with a good execution except the sniper part since I haven't a sniper without a buddy to watch operation area.After the operation int evacuation part it was really a messed-up story. Two choppers full of soldiers are afraid of some tali**ban punk with a rocket launcher (not Stinger) by the way rocket-man had wasted its only ammunitions... I think one mini gun should sweep them off even if it did not kill them all I am pretty sure that all tali**ban cockroaches gonna sh**it their pants ...After this point everything got pretty illogical in every way possible both technical and emotional.To sum up :Still watchable. Acting and the scenes are quite good. But script play and reality is below average. if screenplay was good it would 7-8 over 10