Ganglands creator Julien Leclercq is back on Netflix for a new entry into their fruitful, action-packed collaboration going back a decade. Branded as the first series made with the cooperation of the French elite squad command, the thriller delivers on what you expect, but, more unexpectedly, veers into an emotional and intimate family drama. But creatively, does it hit its targets?
If Tomer Sisley is best known to Netflix subscribers as one of the leads in Messiah (2020) and the global high-concept sci-fi show Vortex, he has enjoyed a steady career as a recognizable hero in both French movies and series. Over the past two decades, he is best known as the face of the Largo Winch comic book adaptations, and in the TF1 smash hit Balthazar, a light procedural which recently ended after five seasons. Here, he stars as Sylvain Caron, a high-ranking officer of the GIGN who is close to his last mission in the field. But before that, he has to reluctantly welcome Max, his godson (Tristan Zanchi)—and son of a colleague killed during an operation gone wrong decades ago—into the force. His own mentor, Christophe (Thierry Neuvic), also comes to him with bad news; and his wife, Jessica (Judith El Zein), is weighing whether to leave the country for Singapore with their daughter Manon in tow. But after the ceremony for new recruits, things will explosively come to a head as a shadowy terrorist group with military-grade explosives targets members of the force. As the synopsis teases, the past will come back to haunt Sylvain and Max in more ways than one as things begin to unravel quickly.
Elite Force is, first and foremost, another showcase for the bona fide talents of Julien Leclercq as an expert action director. He directed a movie featuring a real-life high-stakes GIGN operation, The Assault, in 2010; we can even glimpse framed headlines from that operation in the first episode of the series. But the unprecedented access gives Leclercq and his crew more leeway to stage real-life hostage operations and interventions with a stamp of authenticity. The continued ballet of bullets, group positioning, and adaptation to new information in the field, as well as the defusing of bombs—in training or in real life—are well worth the price of admission, even with a few elements that stretch credulity—nothing out of the ordinary, though, for a genre show.
But the main focus is on Sylvain’s family, whether with colleagues, who are characterized as brothers-in-arms in extreme circumstances, or his actual and extended family: Max, his wife, and his daughter. Even if one would expect Elite Force to make a point of showing Max’s first forays into the field—and we see multiple training sequences attesting to that—the show actually ramps up the family drama aspects, to the point where it eventually takes center stage later in the series. Confronted with an out-of-control terrorist situation and traumatic outcomes, Sylvain’s honorable and respectable behavior becomes fraught; he eventually joins the “strong, silent type” archetype of his American counterparts. But both the writers—Leclercq alongside co-writers Sylvain Caron, Victor Lockwood, Léa Raud, and Elsa Vasseur—and his own superiors are not letting him run away with his borderline vigilante tendencies. In fact, some of the dialogue-oriented scenes featuring internal affairs inspector Commander Saint-Juste (Géraldine Pailhas) count among the most tense and revealing of the season.
Max (Tristan Zanchi), a new recruit with a very deep connection to the central character. (Cr : Netflix)
As a counterterrorism thriller, Elite Force delivers the goods and even manages to surprise with a few twists that show an assured handle on the genre. The Achilles’ heel of this well-prepared cocktail is that some of the relationship scenes featuring Caron’s family take a long time to draw us in and seem very bland and functional in the first half of the show. Moreover, Tristan Zanchi is not given enough room to make his character Max stand out beyond the capable rookie who still defies orders and makes more than a few mistakes along the way. This reliance on well-worn tropes smooths out the edges of a project that packs plenty of punch otherwise. It unfortunately leaves less screen time to make use of its supporting cast, who are mostly sympathetic and deft professional figures, from Cédric (Guillaume Gouix) to explosives expert and MVP of the unit, Tanya (Leanna Chen). But the full package, sustained by a moody, ever-present score courtesy of composer Laurent Perez Del Mar, is well worth your time.
If you like Elite Force, watch:
- Criminal Code
- Blood Coast
- Fauda
Verdict
What begins as a tense, precise immersion into an elite intervention unit soon morphs into an action thriller with shades of 24 and other cult thrillers. Still, the deft hand for action and twists of Julien Leclercq and his crew helps to make the operation a success, despite a few shortcuts in character development.
