DAS BOOT in a TANK. At least, that’s the idea till the last reel takes a couple of sharp right turns in a double epilogue. Your reaction to them (it’s a big ask!) sure to determine your response to this generally excellent German POV WWII film. Co-writer/director Dennis Gansel, with numerous episodes of tv’s BOOT behind him, an obvious choice (and a good one) to helm as we tag along with the five-man crew of a German ‘Tiger’ tank. Theirs the last vehicle to make it out of Stalingrad in the 1943 retreat. And now the first sent back in. The mission? Retrieve a Lieutenant Colonel along with his notebook of codes, plans and final goals covering the next phase of the war. Orders being orders (and Germans being Germans), the men mount up with only minor grumbling, driving their tank thru corpse-filled battlefields and blasted village remains. At one point, hiding from enemy tanks underwater in their submergible tank. (Now we’re really redoing DAS BOOT.) Believably handled and often suspenseful (land mines; engine start-ups; fuel shortages; partisans), at least we’re spared the true deafening noise levels inside those metal echo chambers. (Thanks tech people!) They also keep things as apolitical as possible so we can root for our crew; saving Nazi atrocities for soldiers met along the way. (A cheat and a cliché that’s been standard procedure for decades of largely sympathetic German-made WWII films. Non-German ones, too.) Well staged and acted, without blowing the budget on CGI overkill. But just when we reach our destination, after sacrifice and loss to man and machine, the storyline shifts into something out of HEART OF DARKNESS before spinning again into one of those cop-out endings so popular back in UFA silent cinema days. See Lang, Murnau, Weine.
DOUBLE-BILL: DAS BOOT/’81, go for the 209" ;director’s cut.
No comments:
Post a Comment