"A Powerful Weapon is in the Hands of the Enemy. Only One Man
Can Prevent the Destruction."

"A Special Weapons Attack Team Embark On A
Deadly Mission of No Return."

"Soldiers On a Suicide Mission."

Originally known as Black Sea Raid, as it is still known in parts of Europe for seemingly no apparent reason since no raid even happens at sea... but hey moving on... Special Forces is about everyone's favorite action-movie theme; nuclear war with the Russians! Ok, it's probably a little out of date and I doubt any kids these days really care about the Russians, but 20 years ago this would have been powerful stuff!

Anyway, a Russian nuclear scientist unsurprisingly named 'Natalia' (Marina Mogilevskaja) discovers a missing warhead from the silo she works at... only to discover it's being secretly snuck out of the base. Shortly after spreading the news to her close-friend & commanding officer, she's arrested by the Russian military police, where she's deemed totally loopy and making all this crazy stuff up... clearly covering up their own conspiracy.

Meanwhile the US learns of both the missing warhead and our damsel in distress, so they do what any government would do and call upon CIA agent Rick Halsey (Daniel Bernhardt) to find himself a crack team of soldiers to go kick some Russian ass! Halsey groups together a 3-man-gang of unprofessional misfits to accompany him; a car-jacker-for-hire named Neil "The Wheel" (Dennis Lavelle of Bloodsport 4 "fame"), a wise-cracking gambling-hustler called Billy (Steve Parrish) and his street-fighting yet innocent little brother, Joey (Michael Bunata)... so we have a fantastic cast of clichés all lined up for our epic journey ahead - complete with the best early 90's videogame screen names this side of Double Dragon!

So our gang travel to Russia where they meet up with a local dubbed smuggler who deals them ammo, weapons, uniforms and other regular supplies that any self-respecting undercover-operations task force would need in their day-to-day lives. To make this more thrilling, the cast excessively refers to money as "Benjamin Franklin" - oblivious to the fact that realistically this man would far more likely want rubles than dollars... but hey that doesn't make for 'witty' conversation does it?

So they buy the longest van I have ever seen, that somehow is meant to be our high-action APC, with which they race across the barren Russian countryside in the hope of rescuing Natalia and finding the missile before it leaves the country. Needless to say they find the good doctor after performing some low-budget action scenes and escape into the night. The action that follows is sadly produced with all the substandard flair you can expect from a made-for-video movie shot in Russia; most scenes largely involve running from Russian soldiers who have all the accuracy-skills of Imperial Stormtroopers, turning, shooting a few, then running some more... and unfortunately that's the whole movie. Occasionally when the budget allows it, we get some obsolete helicopters, busses or crazy chases in side-cars... though not much to get the adrenaline pumping. 

Disappointingly of all, Daniel himself is hardly in best form here. Being the fire-power flick this is, there's no real room for Daniel to flex and whoop ass and instead has to contend with just shooting waves of generic Russian soldiers. Likewise, he strangely portrays his character of Rick as more of a used-car salesman than a kick-ass CIA agent... grinning and making cocky remarks the entire time; his masquerade as a journalist in the opening scenes is particularly uncomfortable. Two scenes in particular are almost unbearably embarrassing - first as he lifts Natalia off a steep bank in a honeymoon-embrace (complete with backing soundtrack straight from the set of The Young and the Restless) and secondly when he starts making out with Natalia later in the movie, as he unconvincingly gestures to Joey to vamoose like some teenager who's never got some before. Not to mention he beats an innocent guy in the face for no reason. Not cool. It grieves me to have to criticize Daniel in this way, since I'm such a huge fan (well, obviously)... but there's no denying something went wrong here.

So unfortunately Daniel lets the side down here and the rest of the cast don't help too much either. Billy and Joey have the standard action-brothers relationship (with a very predictable plot-development for them), and generally do the best acting on offer considering their characters were pulled straight out of the Action Movie 101 handbook. Neil 'The Wheel' is somewhat better than the warden Lavelle played in Bloodsport 4, but he's still frustrating to watch since Lavelle has this total inability to act with any real conviction; he just exhumes this constant nonchalant attitude... not cool for an action movie where you should be inspiring your viewers to want to conquer Germany all by themselves armed with nothing but a tooth pick and half a baked potato!

As for Natalia, well she's ok, I guess - she's not exactly as gorgeous as any of the chicks in other Bernhardt movies (especially Blaire from Bloodsport 4 or any of the cast of Mortal Kombat), but she's pleasant enough and her acting is at least on par with the rest of the cast... although that's not saying much, especially since she's undoubtedly dubbed.

So unfortunately I have nothing more to say, other than basically this movie's awful... but there has been worse. By worse, I of course mean Bloodsport 4; for you see as disappointing as this is, it's almost Oscar-material by comparison. To put this all into perspective - Bloodsport 4 is so bad it gives me nervous twitches just in mentioning its name; whilst sitting right above that is G-2: Mortal Conquest; and ever-so-slightly above that exists Special Forces. It's poor to be sure, but there is worse, at least this never pretends its miserable Russian landscapes are America or any crazy nonsense like that! So only see this if you're a die-hard Bernholic that has to see every movie our hero has appeared in, because as much as I hate to say it, it's total pants.