There are bad movies, and then there are movies that feel like bad military exercises in cinematic punishment. Opposing Force, also known as Hell Camp in some circles that were clearly more honest, is one of those movies that seems angry you showed up. It punishes you for watching it, stares you down while you’re trying to care, and then hands you a title that sounds like it was generated by a bored Pentagon intern on NyQuil.
Let’s start with that title. Opposing Force. It tells you nothing and excites no one. It sounds like the generic team name your gym teacher used when he forgot to plan dodgeball. It evokes neither action nor suspense. In fact, it barely evokes anything but the mild confusion you get when you walk into the wrong meeting room. This movie could’ve been called Angry Muscles in the Jungle and at least that would’ve delivered a little clarity. But no, they went with Opposing Force, the cinematic equivalent of a blank stare.
The Premise: Military Exercise or Misguided War Crime?
The film stars Tom Skerritt, whose mustache has more gravitas than the script, and Lisa Eichhorn, a talented actress trapped in a movie that hates women almost as much as it hates pacing. The premise is simple: a group of U.S. soldiers go through a brutal SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training program on a remote island. It’s supposed to simulate the stress of capture by hostile forces. Naturally, things go off the rails because the guy in charge is a psycho. Surprise!
There’s your plot. Now stretch that out for 95 minutes and season with dialogue that sounds like it was translated into English by a fax machine. Sprinkle in some cheap jungle sets, awkward sexual menace, and sweat—so much sweat you’ll start to feel damp just watching it. And you’ve got Opposing Force in all its half-baked, undercooked, over-salted glory.
Tom Skerritt Deserves Better (So Do We)
Skerritt plays Logan, the team leader with a conscience, a calm voice, and the charisma of a soggy field manual. You can see in his eyes that he’s questioning every choice that led to this moment. A Vietnam vet? Probably. A guy who has deep emotional scars? Supposedly. But really, he just looks constipated for most of the runtime. At one point he tries to rally the troops and it lands with the energy of a slow-dripping faucet.
Skerritt tries. He really does. But you can only carry so much weight when the screenplay has the depth of a sand trap. Watching him in Opposing Force is like watching a Shakespearean actor forced to read bathroom graffiti and still sell it with a straight face.
Lisa Eichhorn Is Trapped in a Different, More Horrifying Movie
And then there’s Lisa Eichhorn, who deserves a congressional apology for what this movie puts her through. Her character, Casey, is the first woman to go through this kind of military training, and instead of exploring that dynamic with intelligence or tension, the movie decides to immediately plunge her into every nightmare scenario imaginable. It’s less character development and more trauma speedrun.
The camera lingers on her distress in a way that feels leering and exploitative. There’s no empowerment here—just a slow degradation under the guise of realism. Opposing Force treats her like the plot device in a torture fantasy some screenwriter never got therapy for. Every time she’s on screen, you brace for something awful. Spoiler: it usually happens.
Anthony Zerbe: Mustache-Twirling Madness
Playing the deranged SERE commander Becker is Anthony Zerbe, a man who has made a long career out of acting like he’s one drink away from strangling a houseplant. Here, he’s full tilt unhinged. He grunts, yells, sweats, and delivers every line like he’s auditioning to be rejected from a Rambo movie.
Zerbe is always fun to watch in that “dear god what is he doing?” way, but in Opposing Force, he’s just grimy. His motivations are cartoonish, his sadism is uninspired, and his scenes play out like rejected Full Metal Jacket outtakes—if Full Metal Jacket had been shot with two camcorders and a warehouse of fog machines.
Action That Hurts to Watch (and Not in a Good Way)
The action scenes, such as they are, feel like someone read about fight choreography in a brochure. There are gunfights that look like they were directed by someone who hates guns and fights. There are chase scenes with the energy of a senior jog-a-thon. Explosions happen but without drama or flair. It’s like watching the cast of Gilligan’s Island reenact Platoon on a $6 budget.
The editing is sloppy, the camera work is claustrophobic when it should be kinetic, and every confrontation ends with either someone falling into mud or running off into the jungle like they forgot their lines.
A Soundtrack in Search of a Movie
The music tries to elevate the film but ends up sounding like it belongs to a different, better movie—maybe a mid-tier soap opera or an after-school special about the dangers of steroids. It swells with urgency at the wrong times and disappears when things actually need tension. It’s tonal whiplash in audio form.
Themes? You Mean “Let’s Just Yell a Lot”?
Opposing Force thinks it’s saying something about the cost of militarism, gender roles in combat, and the psychological toll of high-stakes training. In reality, it’s just yelling “SURVIVAL” in a sweaty jungle for an hour and a half. There’s no nuance. Just a lot of grunting and the occasional lecture barked by men who look like they were carved out of old army boots.
It’s a movie that wants to be gritty and real but ends up feeling like boot camp LARPing gone wrong.
Final Verdict: Who Greenlit This? And Why?
If Opposing Force were a military operation, it would’ve been aborted at the planning stage. It’s slow, joyless, and seems confused about what it wants to be. Is it a gritty survival thriller? A feminist statement gone horribly sideways? An anti-authoritarian screed? It fails at all three and instead settles into being a deeply uncomfortable mess.
But hey, at least Tom Skerritt shows up. And Lisa Eichhorn gives it her all, even as the script betrays her at every turn. Anthony Zerbe chews the scenery until there’s nothing left but splinters and bad dialogue. And that title… oh, that title. Opposing Force. It sounds like a rejected workout DVD.
Watch it if you want to be mildly irritated for 95 minutes and then wake up three hours later wondering why your couch smells like jungle sweat.
Otherwise, just salute it from a distance and move along. There’s no glory in this mission.
