While David Morell's original book and the first film adaptation were more about the struggles of former Army Green Beret John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) after he returned from Vietnam, it was the character's astonishing fighting chops — memorably intoned by his former commander (Richard Crenna) — that audiences enjoyed. In three sequels, Rambo went back into battle against the communists in Vietnam, Russian troops in Afghanistan and rebels in Burma.
Released in the U.K. as "Who Dares Wins" — the motto of the British Special Air Service — this Cold War thriller stars Lewis Collins as a disgraced SAS soldier who infiltrates a comically anti-American militant group (led by Judy Davis) that is bent on nuclear extortion. A veritable documentary on the service's tactics, the final battle resembles the real-life SAS assault on the Iranian embassy in London two years earlier.
The SAS would return in the 1999 BBC telefilm Bravo Two Zero, which starred Sean Bean (Game of Thrones) in the true-life tale of a British soldier captured behind enemy lines during the first Gulf War.
Martial arts star Chuck Norris (along with co-star Lee Marvin) gets into the special-ops game in this Cannon film actioner about a Delta Force team battling Lebanese terrorists who hijack an American airliner. The film opens with a tie-in to Operation Eagle Claw, the failed 1980 attempt to rescue American embassy hostages in Iran.
Making a character a current or former special forces warrior is sometimes script shorthand for being bad-ass. Whether mowing down the thugs who kidnapped his daughter (in Commando, 1985) or going low-tech against a mysterious alien monster (Predator), the characters played by '80s strongman Arnold Schwarzenegger came ready-made with skills that kill.
In a similar vein, last year's The A-Team, starring Liam Neeson, rebooted the '80s action TV series about a group of former Army special forces soldiers turned mercenaries ("A-Team" is a Green Beret term).
Everyone's favorite winner Charlie Sheen stars as a Navy SEAL battling terrorists who have kidnapped Navy personnel and stolen Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, taking them from the high seas to the battlegrounds of Beirut. Co-star Michael Biehn plays another SEAL, a role he would revisit in The Abyss and The Rock.
Based on the Tom Clancy novel, ex-CIA agent John Clarke (Willem Dafoe) recruits a team of elite U.S. Army snipers to conduct a covert guerilla war against drug lords, going deep into the Colombian jungle to bomb factories and drug shipments and guide a laser-guided bomb to its target. Back in Washington, Clancy hero Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford, pictured) uncovers the political machinations that started the operation — and which would end it with brutal "plausible deniability."
Perhaps more science fiction than real-life special forces, this boxoffice hit follows a crack unit that uses an experimental aircraft — a retrofitted Stealth fighter — to enter a hijacked airliner in flight to subdue terrorists. Team leader Steven Seagal (pictured) makes an early and unexpected exit, leaving the team to count on an intelligence analyst (Kurt Russell) and nerdy scientist (Oliver Platt) along for the ride. Seagal had previously played a former Navy SEAL trapped aboard a hijacked battleship in Under Siege (1992)
This kinetic actioner from director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer includes a range of special forces characters, including a rogue unit of Force Recon Marines led by Ed Harris who take over Alcatraz to blackmail the government. Scientist Nic Cage is recruited to accompany a Navy SEAL team to infiltrate the island along with Sean Connery, a criminal with his own special forces resume and skills (and a wink to Connery's 007 days).
Director Ridley Scott's riveting and highly realistic portrayal of the ill-fated 1993 Battle of Mogadishu stars an ensemble cast topped by Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor and Eric Bana. The film portrays many special forces units, including Navy SEALs, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Air Force Pararescue crews and Delta Force snipers, two of whom volunteered to defend a downed pilot against overwhelming odds, and who received posthumous Medals of Honor for their bravery.
Bruce Willis stars as a Navy SEAL team leader sent into war-torn Nigeria to rescue an American citizen tending to refugees. When the situation goes from bad to worse, Willis and crew go AWOL to try and protect the refugees and get them safely to the border.
John Wayne commanded this quintessential tribute to the Green Berets, slogging it out against the Viet Cong on a fairly conventional battlefield. While the Duke's gung-ho patriotism and anti-Communist fervor perhaps got in the way of producing a coherent film, it was a commercial success. Featuring the popular Green Beret ballad from two years before, the movie would stand as almost the only pro-military film set in Vietnam for many years.
Ian Fleming's venerable spy was orginally from the British SIS — their version of the CIA — and while he's more of a one-man army, many of his assignments covered the same territory as his more heavily-armored allies, even if the fancy gadgets were sometimes pure sci-fi. In You Only Live Twice (1967), Bond teamed up with the ultimate Japanese special forces: ninjas. Pictured, current Bond guy Daniel Craig in 2006's Casino Royale.
Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow showed her prowess with military movies in 2009's Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker — which was about an Army explosive ordnance disposal team, not special forces. Bigelow had a film in development about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, but with the terrorist leader confirmed killed by a SEAL assault team over the weekend, the direction of her project is unclear.
A soon-to-be published book on the Navy elite team, Seal Team Six, by Howard E. Wasdin, is already attracting attention from filmmakers.