Good

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2015)

This film contains two faces. One represents good filmmaking and pretty good war drama depicting, some drama realism of the war that we haven't seen in the US movies for a very long time. In that way, this is one of the best war movies that Hollywood has ever produced, from my point of view. The war atmosphere, social profile of the soldiers in the US army and their dialogs are among the best I have ever seen regarding the American movies. We have all been used to watch the American soldiers in the US movies as the charming knights in the shining armour but in this movie it was far from that and much closer to reality. Acting was very good. I also think that the director has seen the Apocalypse Now and the Iron Cross but also Russian 9-th Rota, and utilized everything he liked from them.
However, the other face of this film is an irritating low sense for technical and strategical military reality of WWII:
Battle scenes are more suitable for a fairy tale than for a war movie: Germans in an AT ambush are being ambushed by the four Sherman tanks, kind a ridiculous. Tiger tank which was a heavy tank with a much longer shooting range than the medium Sherman tank was never running towards the incoming tank group but rather shooting from a distance (or retreat if necessary) where the enemy tanks couldn't have reached it which was its main advantage. Its like you're holding a gun and you see four guys with knives running after you and instead of shooting at them while retreating, you start running at them, like – now I'm going to smash your had with this gun! Above all, lets mention that Germans put their best men to be the tiger tank crew so it was almost impossible to destroy that tank from the ground. This is why the US Air force was sent after tigers in most of the cases - US dive bombers dropping huge bombs on the tiger turrets were the only real weapon against these tanks, cause even if you ambushed them with medium tanks, you couldn't approach them as they were always escorted with light or medium tanks.
Killing 300 SS soldiers with a non-mobile Sherman tank is more for some Disney Cartoon (I won't go into the details where SS soldiers are aiming a tank with a panzer-Faust from the 3 meter distance even though that weapon could shoot from a range from 30 to 150 meters. It's like you approach to 30 feet range to shoot an enemy with a sniper rifle . And one Molotov cocktail ends the tank that can't move in a jiffy.
Also, a tank lieutenant that is jumping on a highly decorated SS officer on a horse and killing him without problem is more suitable for some John Wayne movie and has nothing to do with WWII reality.
There is an idea that the group is experienced Africa corp unit but you got to now then that they were fighting the more experienced and incomparably more trained, armed and successful German troops here. Also, few scenes where Germans beg for life which is more than ridiculous cause Germans were fanatics and such thing didn't happen with their POW. Don't forget, Germany was fighting USSR and the US at the same time and still was so hard to break their spine.