It's a film about a tank crew made of one-dimensional stereotypes shooting what can only be described as hilariously incompetent lemmings dressed up as SS soldiers, every now and then stopping to proclaim the horrors of war with a straight face and a wink of moral superiority.
It's internally inconsistent, tonally-challenged, ham-fisted and arrogant.
It wants to be two things at once: an anti-war film, and an army recruitment advert.
But having the redshirts and attractive civilians die just to drive the first one home feels less like the cruel randomness of war, and more like the sergeant from FMJ shouting at you: 'did you get it yet?' With the same level of subtlety.
Who gets to die and who lives is all telegraphed miles ahead and is as surprising to see as the credits roll when the film finally ends.
Half way through, the film remembers its other raison d'etre, and what you get, essentially, is a 300 movie, with mooks properly demonised and made easy to dispose of. There is no tension whatsoever, as the tank is equipped with a special forcefield making the enemies stupid.
Now maybe some people find the chiselled face of an American Hero telling them that 'war is hell' while wading through heaps of corpses of undeniably evil enemies and perhaps even heroically dying at the end a step up from other comic-book fare out there, but I found it insulting, ham-fisted and dumb.
God, I hate this film.
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Topic: The Movie Discussion Thread! (Read 170181 times)