Entertaining

Rating: 5/10 (13 March 2015)

The setting is the near end of WW2. A US tank crew is stranded in Nazi-Germany, holding position at a crossroad on a self-imposed suicide mission.
This is a typical war movie, entertaining, violent, but not very deep. The side characters are portrayed according to the situation. A main character needs to learn to kill: an an ugly German soldier with a stolen American coat appears. Tragedy of war is displayed: A beautiful girl in a short skirt, in love with the rookie soldier, dies in an air strike.
But what bothers me most is that Hitler would probably have liked the movie. A tank crew facing an overwhelming enemy crowd refuses to surrender, but sacrifices itself (of course praying) for a higher cause. In fact, this glorification of martyrdom has been idealized by the Nazis, e.g. when the 6. army was sacrificed to hold Stalingrad, and civilians were mobilized to extreme (and futile) resistance. It leaves a bitter taste to see such stuff nowadays.
5 stars for showing the ugly face of war unadorned. In that sense, it resembles an anti-war movie.