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The Tank is one of those war movies that sounds super interesting if you are a war movie fan as Im and also there was a ton of buzz about this movie online many calling it a hidden gem although I think was not the case and it turn out kinda meh. I just sounds interesting especially when you throw in that 1943 World War II setup and the whole claustrophobic tank angle because who does not want to see soldiers stuck inside a metal box dealing with all kinds of hell while fighting. The movie works for the most part when it sticks to what it does best which is keeping everything tight inside or around the tank itself, it actually works pretty damn well and you get these tense moments that make you feel uncomfortable, the first half hour is where this thing really shines because you care about the crew and what they are dealing with. The mine scene alone is one of the most nerve wracking moments during the entire movie and everything about that setup just works, but then around the 40 minute mark something goes wrong and the movie tries to add all this extra story and depth that nobody asked for so it just gets complicated to keep up with every other side plot and suddenly what was working so well just falls apart because they forgot what made the beginning so good in the first place, its like the movie is really good for about 20 minutes and then it just goes into cruise control.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31495504/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
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This German war movie just dropped on Amazon Prime and its available with English dubbing which is actually pretty solid, Im confortable watching movies in some languages that Im familiar with certain words but German is not one of those languages, I find it a really complicated language but you do not have to worry about reading subtitles if thats not your thing, the whole setup puts you with a five man Tiger tank crew on the Eastern Front during 1943 when the Germans are retreating from Stalingrad and everything is going to shit for them. The mission is simple on paper but impossible in reality, they gotta find Lieutenant Paul von Hardenburg who everyone thought was dead, this guy supposedly survived Stalingrad and even cut off his own hand to escape from rubble, now he has some important military data that cannot fall into enemy hands so Lieutenant Philip Gerkens and his crew have to go deep into no mans land to bring him back. The movie throws you right into the action from the start, Philip and his crew are holding a bridge so it can explode and stop the enemy from crossing, they got enemy planes attacking from above and tanks shooting at them while they race across this 600 meter bridge with flames coming inside their tank. When they barely make it out alive Philip gets his new orders for Operation Labyrinth, he has to cancel their leave and head right back into the war zone going east across enemy lines to find this lieutenant, the crew is not exactly thrilled about this because they thought they were done for a while but orders are orders so they load up and drive straight into hell again.
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The first part of this movie really works because it keeps everything focused on survival, as you can tell from the scene I describe above its very intense and keeps you wanting more with the claustrophobia of being stuck in that tank with four other guys, you got Philip who is the commander and seems to be carrying some dark memories with him, Helmut who is one of the crew members dealing with the loss of his 15 year old son in the war and deals with it by teasing everyone, Keilig who used to be a teacher before all this started and there is another crew member Christian Weller who starts questioning everything as things get darker. They drive through forests at night, they talk about von Hardenburg and whether he might actually be a Russian spy now, they hear strange Latin mass on the radio even though people in that area are Orthodox which is the first sign that something weird is going on here, when they reach these tank barriers made by captured enemy soldiers who were too weak to work and just got killed and left there you start feeling how messed up this whole situation is for everyone involved. The landmine sequence is where this movie really start to take off and shows you what it could have been if it stuck to this kind of stuff, Philip stops the tank when he sees danger signs and him and some crew members get out to look for mines. Philip finds one right in front of their tracks and calls one of the crew over to help disarm it, they carefully lift the mine and thats when they see a grenade underneath it, its a trap within a trap and now someone has to hold his hand down on that grenade or they all die right there, this whole scene is tense and you care whether the guy is gonna make it out or if his hand slips and everyone explodes. Philip makes the call to back the tank up because the tank is more important than one person, he ties a rope around the mine and tells the crew member to slowly pull his hand out, when he does it the mine explodes and sets off every other mine around them but they survive and keep going, this is the kind of stuff the movie should have focused on the whole time instead of what it does later. They get attacked by heavy tanks and have to use smoke grenades to escape but then three more tanks show up and trap them, Philip makes this crazy decision to drive the tank into the river and go underwater to cross it, the tank fully submerges and you got this whole sequence where they are driving blind underwater hoping they do not sink or drown, when they come back up on the other side they are in enemy territory and things start getting even more strange from this point forward which is both good and bad depending on what you wanted from this movie. They run into an enemy tank and have to fight it, they manage to destroy it but Keilig gets badly wounded in the process and you can tell he is not gonna make it, he talks about how he misses teaching and remembers the summer of 1939 before the war started when everything was still normal then he dies and they bury him right there; by the way many of this dates I had to look up because I couldnt remember them all Im not a reader but though would be important. After all this chaos when crew members go to check the enemy tank they find something disturbing, all the enemy soldiers have turned into skeletons even though dead bodies do not burn that fast, this is where the movie starts going into weird supernatural territory that some people are gonna love and others are gonna hate, Weller says they should turn back because none of this is normal but Philip insists they only got 20 kilometers left.
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I had a friend who was a boat engine mechanic and use to tell me the many times he to stuck in the middle of the sea or coast because things braking, remind of him whe the tank exhaust got blown out so they have to fix it with parts from the destroyed enemy tank its that "mechanic" surviving mode, real Macgiver mode. They had this contradiction when Helmut says the tank can only go another 30 kilometers but Philip says there will be supplies at the bunker, you start seeing more flashbacks to Philips past and its clear he is carrying some serious trauma about something that happened during the war, Weller starts questioning why von Hardenbuurg matters so much and whether this whole mission is actually personal for Philip, he even votes to remove Philip from command but the other crew members vote to keep him in charge because they have taken all the risks together and cannot betray their commander now, chain of command is going down at this point. The compass stops working, Philips watch has been stopped at 12 oclock since the bridge explosion at the beginning, the rain starts and stops at weird times, they find German paratroopers who were sent on this mission before them and failed, all the signs are pointing to something being very wrong here but they keep pushing forward because Philip refuses to give up on the mission no matter what but they finally reach the bunker and find soldiers partying inside which seems completely out of place given everything else going on almost like a glitch in the matrix, Philip goes in alone to find von Hardenbur and this is where the movie completely changes into something else entirely, von Hardenburg is alive and waiting for him but he starts saying strange things and laughing about how they sent Philip in such a small tank to rescue him. They sit down to eat and von Hardenburg asks Philip about what they did in Stalingrad, this is the memory that has been haunting Philip the whole movie, Russian forces took shelter in a building with women and children and Philip was ordered to burn them all alive, von Hardenburg hesitated but Philip just told him to follow orders and fired the tank killing everyone, now Philips own wife and child died the same way burned to death in a shelter and von Hardenburg tells him we reap what we sow, its just insane.
All the food starts rotting in front of them, von Hardenburg says this is all happening in Philips mind and asks him why he delayed the retreat order at the bridge, turns out Philip received a telegram right before the bridge exploded telling him his family was dead and he just froze up, von Hardenburg says he died a long time ago and takes Philip toward a fire where you can hear women and children screaming, the movie just starts to fall apart because it gets so far far away from what was a solid War Rescue movie. Philip snaps back to reality and he is still on the bridge, him and his entire crew died there and everything we just watched was happening in his mind as he was dying. Then the movie becomes this boring drag where they keep trying to tell you deeper themes and messages but it all feels forced to the point where you stop caring about anything happening from that point, I think they had this idea of psychological trauma and make it all a hallucination but it just didnt work that well which sucks because the tank battles and action stuff is still solid when they actually focus on it, that ending sequence goes on forever too like 15 to 20 minutes of just trying to explain shit that you do not care about anymore because the rescue mission never happen, never ended, it would have been better if they make the mission long enough to cover up the entire movie and then make you realize it was all a dream and end it there but instead it drags for about 20 minutes and ends so abruptly that you are left wondering what the point of all that was anyway. The Tank is frustrating because it had potential to be this tight focused war movie about survival and tension, but it got lost trying to be something bigger, something more creative and deep and more important than it needed to be, ending up as none of those fancy themes it wanted to hold on to, I am giving this thing a 6 out of 10 because when it works it really works but when it does not it just becomes a slog.
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