Good enough... up until the last scene

Rating: 6/10 (4 December 2017)

A reasonably well-shot and definitely well-acted war movie, but with enough dumb plot holes and strange moments to leave you scratching your head. It's a great movie to watch in that in some ways it's the most realistic depiction of tank combat seen on film in ages - shells deflect when hitting armour at the wrong angle, there are certain weapons that a tank can just plain ignore, etc. However, there are also other choices made that cheapen the whole experience (I guarantee that Brad Pitt's Hitler Youth haircut would have gotten him lynched in WW2 for real) and the last scene is so unbelievably stupid that it beggars belief.
I'm not joking or exaggerating when I say that it's easily the worst "climax" I've seen in a movie in years, maybe decades. Visually exciting but fundamentally and creatively ridiculous, it does a fine job of stripping the movie of any stage-setting and immersing it may have done previously. It's not an awful movie (some of the tank battle scenes are really exciting) but don't let your brain get involved.