Film Review: Special Forces (2011)

Regular readers of this blog (cue the sound of crickets chirping) will know that I have a soft spot for French films. I don't consider it a soft spot, I just think the French have a certain knack for thrillers that generally beats what Hollywood is offering. But just to show I don't play favourites, I have to nominate Special Forces as one of worst films I've seen this year. The problem is that the more the French try and ape American-style filmmaking and tropes, the more trouble they get into.

Special Forces is about an elite team of French commandos who are sent into Afghanistan to rescue a French journalist (Diane Kruger) who has been kidnapped by the Taliban. The plot is no more complex than the average John Wayne western, and a western is pretty much what this is, with the Taliban filling the role of the Apaches. The commandos slaughter loads o' Afghans, none of whom seem to have the least idea of how to take cover when engaged in a firefight. That's one of hoariest tropes on view in this film. In the older generation of westerns and WW II films the bad guys were easily identifiable as the ones who couldn't shoot straight, and who thought standing out in the open was a smart way to find out where the heavily armed hero was hiding. When I was kid, watching films like Where Eagles Dare and TV shows like Combat and The Rat Patrol, it bothered me so much that the Germans were incompetent buffoons that I actually began rooting for them as underdogs. Clearly, I was too young to know much about Nazi politics.

The other cliche that gets a good workout here is that of the small, elite military team that has one of those band of brothers bonds that stops just short of homoeroticism. This gang bickers, brawls and kicks Taliban ass, and mourns each death in the unit as though it represented a moment from the Twilight of the Gods. The Taliban clearly aren't suffused with such noble feelings, because they blithely leap over their fallen comrades on their way to being the next victim of French fire. Speaking of which, I'm getting tired of action films in which the leads carry their weapons in the prescribed military/FBI combat stances. I'm also weary of seeing commando teams giving each other inexplicable hand signals as they silently creep through a jungle or comb through buildings. Yes, I know it's all very accurate and true-to-life, and the actors probably all had a short spell in some kind of boot camp, but I just don't give a crap. This faux realism usually takes the place of crafting an energetic, smartly-choreopraphed action sequence. And if Lee Marvin, a Pacific War vet who did some actual killing, never held his gun in the officially approved FBI manner, then no one needs to do it.

This is how you hold a gun, maggots.

Are there any redeeming features in Special Forces? Nope. It just proves that the French should stick to thrillers and spiky romantic dramas. And for God's sake can we please stop with the action films that look like training videos for grunts and police cadets?

Book Review: Butcher's Moon (1974) By Richard Stark

In 1962 Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, introduced the character of Parker, a professional thief who is as remorseless as he is efficient. This first novel was The Hunter (filmed as Point Blank with Lee Marvin) and it probably marks the beginning of the modern American crime novel. Prior to The Hunter crime novels were largely about detectives and detection, and stories about criminals usually ended with the crooks caught or killed. Stark changed all that. Parker always lives to steal another day, and he usually leaves a high body count in his wake. And Parker's no Robin Hood; he steals for himself, and if his accomplices are caught or killed that's their bad luck. Parker isn't just hardboiled, he's frozen in carbonite.

One of the chief pleasures of the Parker novels is the plotting. The stories begin at a dead run and then rarely pause for a breath. Parker and his confederates always plan their heists to the last detail, but then something usually goes awry, and Parker ends up avoiding pursuers or doing some pursuing himself. Sometimes he's doing both at the same time. Despite the breathlessness of the plotting, Stark takes care to add some depth and shading to even minor characters, and he can also add humour here and there; in Butcher's Moon, in the middle of a casino heist, two thieves and the casino operator they're robbing suddenly have a ridiculously passionate discussion about health food and fitness.

It's easy to see the influence Stark had on Elmore Leonard, who began his crime writing career just as Stark was winding down the Parker series. Leonard's plots are also about criminal plots that go off the rails, his heroes are often Parker-like, and Leonard's novels always feature humorous, parenthetical moments. And Leonard in turn has influenced a host of other writers and filmmakers (step forward Mr Tarantino). The character of Parker has also been reborn in Lee Child's Jack Reacher thrillers. The Reacher character is definitely on the right side of the law, but his ruthlessness, his skill, his matter-of-fact approach to danger is pure Parker.

In Butcher's Moon, Parker and his frequent partner Alan Grofield travel to a small city in Ohio to reclaim a stash of money they'd hidden there years before. The money is missing and the finger of blame points towards the head of the local crime syndicate. Parker wants his money and applies pressure to the crime boss, but that ends with Grofield being wounded and captured. Parker then assembles a gang of thieves he's worked with in previous novels and they begin an all-out assault on the syndicate's men and businesses. Things get very exciting and very bloody. 

Butcher's Moon, written in 1974, marks the end of "old" Parker. In 1999 Stark resumed writing Parker novels and these very definitely gave us a "new" Parker. New Parker is even better than old Parker. Old Parker novels occasionally suffer from stilted tough-guy dialogue, and the depiction of women can be summed up by the fact that they're usually referred to as "broads" or "dames." Also, the plots of some of the old Parkers sometimes bordered on the farfetched, straying out of the crime genre and into action/adventure. Butcher's Moon suffers a bit from this last problem, but in other respects it's a bridge to new Parker. The dialogue is free of cliche and there's no blatant sexism.

New Parker began with the aptly-titled Comeback, and in all respects Stark's writing is better. The plots are more unpredictable and believable, the dialogue is leaner and devoid of cliches, and Parker is made more human, but no less implacable and lethal, by the addition of a steady girlfriend. The best of the new Parkers is Breakout, which features both a prison escape and a heist. I suspect Stark brought back Parker because he felt a bit miffed that Leonard, Child, and others were getting rich in a genre that was largely his creation.

Check out the trailer for Point Blank below, but be warned that while it's superb, it makes significant departures from the book.