Solid War Film But Nothing Magnificent

Rating: 7/10 (30 January 2015)

While this was a descent action/historical fiction/war movie, it wasn't anything that great. It gave good performances from the main five actors, had good cinematography, but seemed unrealistic.
The plot was not very well put together and in the end you were left wondering what the point of it all was. It goes through the motions at the beginning with not much happening and builds up to the final stand where it is "do or die" but leaves the story without full closure of anything. It had many standard war movie cliché's especially with the small band of men taking on hundreds alone. While it did avoid the cliché of them all surviving, they included a different one with the rookie living in the end and being pardoned by an enemy troop. How exactly did he become an expert fighter in just two days when before he barely knew how to operate a firearm? Who knows.
While most of the effects and visuals of the movie were raw gritty and incredibly realistic looking, there was one flaw that tainted the look of the entire film. The tracer rounds that the armies fired throughout looked like laser beams from from some sci-fi film with their long glowing neon green and red streaks flying throughout the air. It almost looked like a firefight in Star Wars Battlefront or something.
A truly good historical fiction movie should look like it was shot in the time that the story takes place in. While most of this looked pretty good, some of the dialogue and personalities of the characters didn't fly. And what was with all the Macklemore haircuts??? I'm pretty positive undercuts were not a popular look back then especially if you were an enlisted man in the United States Military.
The out of place romance was just plain ridiculous.
Overall it did give us today a look on what it might have been like in the life of a tank crew during World War II, showing us the horrors of war, but also the little bit of goodness that shines through even in the most horrible of situations. It was a good film but nothing to be amazed over.