Movie PosterOut comes another movie to cross off the Isaac Florentine and Scott Adkins list – Special Forces.

This is a pretty standard action flick with good touches of martial arts action throughout from a fair few of the actors.  The movie is about a Special Forces team lead by Major Don Harding (Marshall Teague).  When it comes to getting people out of tough situations – these guys are pretty much the people call on.

When a young woman taking photos of a military group in the Soviet republic of Muldonia is kidnapped, the team decide to go in and rescue her.  But the military group holding this woman aren’t push overs – two British SAS soldiers were sent into the country and have since gone missing and are presumed dead.  So with great care, Don takes his team in and begins to plan their extraction.

During one of their operations, they find themselves being followed by a strange man on a motorcycle, who eventually saves a few of them in a fire fight.   This man is one of the missing British SAS agents named Talbot (Scott Adkins).

From there Talbot eventually joins up with the US Special Forces Unit and they work together to free the young woman from the corrupt military group.

The Usual ‘Personal Vendetta’ Theme applies.

One thing we learn early in the film is that Major Don has encountered this group before.  The current leader of the military once lead a group of men who killed off his entire unit, and took him hostage.  Having escaped and forming a new team in recent years, one of his men is worried about him making this a personal mission. To which Don proclaims ‘he is a professional’.

Talbot played by Scott Adkins

Strangely enough Scott Adkins’ character Talbot is there for personal reasons in exact contrast to Don, trying to get revenge for his fellow SAS man who was killed – who left behind a wife and child.

After most of Don’s unit is killed yet again, history seems to repeat itself as Don starts to take things more personally.

This whole theme seems pretty coincidental, and while adding a a more personal touch to the story it also brings a ‘staged’ sense to it.  Everything lines up just so perfectly that it’s a little hard to believe.

The first Isaac Florentine & Scott Adkins film

While Scott Adkins isn’t the main character of this film, he’s certainly not far.  Among all of the characters in this film his (Talbot) seems to be the most competent, saving Don’s Unit twice and being responsible for blowing the ‘bad guy base’ sky high when they rescue the woman.

Scott Adkins in Special Forces

Naturally his action scenes really stand out and really have that Florentine/Adkins feel to them.  While all of the characters display a decent level of martial arts technique in their quick flashes of hand to hand combat, Scott’s final fight with one of the military group is the real gem in this movie – it really pulls up the overall score of the film.

A long but highly acrobatic fight displaying many well choreographed techniques really marks Scott’s name on this film.

The Action

This movie was very low budget (at $2.5 million) and was straight to video so you can’t expect a hell of a lot – but they did well with what they had.  With the basic and transparent nature of the story, this movie relies heavily on the action through gun fights and hand to hand combat sequences.

The team

The martial arts are not bad being an Isaac Florentine film, but is still in the early days compared to his more recent martial arts masterpieces.

Overall I’d say the action is not bad, but not great.  But if you’re a fan of Scott Adkins you’ll want to see the final fight scene.  So check it out if you’re keen!

On DVD –

Region 1 (US & Canada)
Special Forces on DVD

Region 2 (UK, Europe, etc)
Special Forces on DVD

Region 4 (Australia, New Zealand, etc)
No such luck! Only available if you go region free.

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