SerpApi.Org
There are reasons why action-heavy dramas do well: they provide a lot of tension and give viewers something to watch while thinking of or doing something else. But the problem with so many of them is that the characters tend to be pretty one-dimensional. That’s the issue we have with the new French series Elite Force on Netflix.
ELITE FORCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: On a rainy night, a Gendarmerie officer steps onto an iron bar high above the ground. Training officers watch him. When one tells him to unhook himself and the trainee complies, he’s told that he’s out for blindly following orders.
The Gist: David Caron (Tomer Sisley) is a top officer in the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), the elite tactical unit of the French National Gendarmerie. In this group of recruits who are going through extreme trials to see if they cut it for GIGN is David’s godson Max (Tristan Zanchi). Max is the son of a close friend and GIGN colleague of David’s who was killed in an explosion 15 years prior.
During the training period, the GIGN force is called to intercept and return vans that contain a powerful experimental explosive. This explosive was stolen from a military installation, with soldiers killed and kidnapped. It’s a tricky operation, with David aiming to disable the van from a helicopter before the van goes into a nearby town and while a school bus drives by. Once it’s disabled, David and the team have to disarm the explosive and figure out if the soldier at the wheel was a willing participant. They only find out after the operation that there were two vans, meaning only half the cargo was secured.
SIGN UP FOR DECIDER DIGEST FOR NEWS AND STREAMING RECOMMENDATIONS
This was more or less David’s last mission, as he’s ready to resign and spend more time with his wife Jessica (Judith El Zein) and their teenage daughter. When David finds out that his boss and mentor Christophe (Thierry Neuvic) has pancreatic cancer and is leaving GIGN with only months to live, he thinks he should stay, but Christophe tells him to leave and enjoy his life while he can.
But there’s a problem: Max is progressing well through the training. Even when David changes a trial to a much trickier one where Max has to defuse a bomb, Max ends up completing the task. David promised Max’s mom that he’d never get into GIGN, and when they talk during Max’s graduation ceremony, she is angry that David couldn’t fulfill that promise. For Max’s part, though, he felt GIGN was where he always wanted to be.
Knowing he can’t leave Max alone in the GIGN, David decides to stay on the force, much to the disappointment of Jess.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Elite Force (Original Title: GIGN), created by Julien Leclercq and Sylvain Caron, has a similar feel to other Netflix action dramas like Man On Fire or The Night Agent.
Our Take: Elite Force is one of those shows that seems to think that broodiness or slight indecisiveness from its main character counts as a deep dive into that character’s personality. But what actually happens is that between action sequences, we see the character projecting some sort of furrowed-brow doubt about his lifelong pursuit without even a notion that he’s going to pick his family or a quiet life over getting shot at.
This isn’t Tomer Sisley’s fault. He generally does a good job of showing just how conflicted David is about staying in GIGN and his role in Max’s father’s death 15 years ago. But there isn’t a second where you think that he’s going to leave the force and take his daughter to her music conservatory classes for the rest of this life. His life is in the GIGN, and Max’s presence there takes precedence over getting to know his wife and daughter.
Most of the rest of the people we meet in the first episode are generic paramilitary types from the recruits to the officers. Even Max doesn’t have much of a personality aside from being talented and determined. This doesn’t feel like the kind of show where we’re going to get to know most of the characters beyond the skills they display in the field as orders are being barked out over their communication devices. That might be all you want, given the well-choreographed and tense action sequences. Just don’t expect there to be more than explosions and furrowed brows substituting for depth of emotion.
Performance Worth Watching: Like we said, Tomer Sisley does the best he can with the limited character of David.
Sex And Skin: When David comes home to Paris, Jess jumps into his arms and they start taking each other’s clothes off. But we don’t see much else.
Parting Shot: There’s an explosion in the parking lot of the training facility, and David, Christophe, and Max are all in the vicinity of the bomb.
Sleeper Star: Maybe Judith El Zein as Jess, though we were confused when she told David that if he was going to stay with GIGN she was going to take a job in Singapore. What about their daughter?
Most Pilot-y Line: When David approaches a disappointed Jess outside the graduation party, he decides to embrace her through some horizontal bars as if he’s in prison. We guess there’s some symbolism there but it felt physically awkward when it didn’t have to be.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Elite Force is fine for what it is, which is an action drama that concentrates more on tense chases and bomb defusions than actually making its characters have any depth whatsoever.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
