Another film showing how hard and violent war is

Rating: 7/10 (13 August 2017)

Following the daily route of a tank crew during the last months of WWII in Germany, showing both the humanism and heroism of its members, this movie does its very best to immerse us in all the horror, the dirt, the sweat and the blood that soldiers had to endure back then, even at the relative shelter of a Sherman. It shows violence without qualms, and succeeds in creating a memorable rendering for the viewer, well helped by several tense action scene and a total immersion, comforting the viewer that it all seems real.
But in fact it contrasts with the historic reality and all the credibility of the events bound to it, which are indeed quite forgotten for the sake of the tense and bad-ass looking scenes. Germans' tanks and their anti-tank artillery are less accurate and effective than they really were, allowing American soldiers and tanks to take the advantage in situations where they might have not, situations they probably wouldn't have engaged that way in the first place in reality, knowing both their own strength and weakness and those of German units, and preferring not taking such useless risks, especially at that time near the end of the war. So the exceptional is standardized, and a handful of Americans hold a suicidal position against a regiment of hundreds of Nazis, butchering many of them. It could have been greater if the Germans looked less like a herd of wildebeest willing to rush in number and more like soldiers willing to defeat or simply survive their enemy to fight at least another day. In fact the context of this whole last stand lacks credibility, why the hell these Americans would sacrifice their life to hold a position against all odds, whereas Germany is collapsing, invaded from everywhere by Allies and Soviets, and this German armed group is not in position to change a damn thing about it, in fact such a German force would have most likely entrenched itself on a defensive position to ambush the enemy at that time of the war, rather than the opposite.
Anyway the film is made of good quality, with a good immersion, tense and convincing actors who compensate the more artificial and less credible stakes of the scenario, to give you a quite memorable viewing.