Visually spectacular, yet implausible

Rating: 5/10 (14 February 2016)

In this short review I'd like to point out two levels that I found existent within this movie.
First is the movie's visual spectacularity. If you want to see all the filthy stuff the war is about, you'll surely find it here. Having been set in the final days of WWII, the movie boasts with all the dirt, the mud, the violence and the blood pertinent to its settings. And that is where I find the amusing part of the movie. The visual effects, the combat scenes and the photography in general are done very well. You'll find some very good and exciting fight moments, all-guns-blazing included. In accordance with that, there is plenty of blood bursting out of soldiers falling down in the heat of a battle. Since the main characters are soldiers themselves, stuck deep somewhere in Germany in April 1945, neither their outfits lack dirt, nor the ground they tread on lacks mud.
And now a few words about the second level. The plot and the development of some of its parts are things that spoiled the movie. Generally speaking, the air of patheticism and obvious implausibility become present in the second part of the movie and tend to ruin it irreversibly. For instance, there is a scene of four US tanks fighting in an open field against one German tank. Predictably, the three US tanks are easily busted, but the last one manages to destroy the German tank. In another scene, the lone group of five US soldiers are expecting a German battalion consisting of several hundred well-equipped soldiers. You guess what is coming next - they bravely choose to stay stuck in their damaged tank and to fight the upcoming Germans. The battle starts and it seems it lasts for hours. I've never been a soldier, but I think that any group of three hundred or more armed soldiers could easily overpower a bunch of commandos fortified in an immobile tank.
To conclude the review, this movie will provide a nice, visually engaging piece of action to those who like it, however it (the movie) could be found quite disappointing by those who expect a little bit more than yet another World War II picture.