Good action and acting, but bad story, tons of clichés and a horrible showdown

Rating: 5/10 (2 January 2015)

This movie could have been above 7/10, if the battles, especially the final one, had't been so bad that I wanted to exit the theater 5-10 minutes before the film finished. 1) action - plenty of it, very good technical effects of body parts being severed by MG bullets or tank projectiles, lots of explosions and other special effects 2) acting is good, no question 3) story - one tank crew fights its way through Nazi-Germany until they have to hold a crossroad, alone and immobilized against hundreds of elite SS troops to prevent the Nazis from hitting the supply columns of thousands of unescorted and unarmed (?) cooks and doctors. BAD. 4) it is so cliché-laden, it almost hurt. From the tough war-hero commander (Pitt), over the new guy struggling to assimilate, the one "non-caucasian" (in this case Mexican) in the team, the one slightly crazy team member, to the final mission which means certain death, which however, the new guy survives miraculously and due to the mercy of an enemy who decides against killing him, although his crew just mowed down 200 of his imbecile SS buddies... 5) realism was not on the list of goals to be achieved, which is demonstrated in most battle scenes. The Germans miss their targets most of the time out of close range and the final battle is so ridiculous that it ruined an otherwise decent, but cliché-laden movie. 300 elite SS troops constantly dance into the MG fire of the immobilized tank like ballerinas, waving their guns and missing the tank out of 5 yards distance with an RPG 2 or 3 times, sticking their head into the tank to be stabbed to death, and always attacking from the front, since the tank has no guns on the sides and in the back (where Pitt stands for 5 minutes on top of the tank killing dozens but not being hit once until a sniper shoots him three times in the chest, which, however, still allows him to climb back in the tank and hold a nice chat with the rookie, until he is blown up by two grenades, which do finally kill him but leave his body completely intact.
There are so many unrealistic, or let's say idiotic, scenes that this otherwise decent action flick ended up being sub-par.