Wants to have it both ways, but ultimately fails at both

Rating: 2/10 (3 January 2015)

Most of the negative reviews here have focused on how unrealistic the battles were, especially the last one. Or other aspects of the story for that matter - realism seems to be a huge picking point for many (and I'm not surprised at this).
For me, yes the clichéd and ridiculous ending was a poor way to finish the film - but I had a bigger (but perhaps connected) problem way before this.
The movie sets out to show us that war is horrific - and some shots really worked in that respect, really impacting me as intended (the tank rolling over the rapidly breaking up corpse for example...a truly ghastly image). So this is the gritty realism the makers and actors talked about.
But then the ending is just Hollywood nonsense all the way...sooo, the reason why that doesn't work is this: you can't put me through watching realistic horror-after-horror without a point. The point is "war is horrific"? Please, thanks to some excellent war movies (and novels, documentaries, etc) over the years, we're well aware of the horrors of war. And that's why some reviewers have speculated this ultra-detailed devastation of people is as much voyeuristic as anything else.
Another example (definitely spoiler for this btw) of the film wanting to have it both ways is the frustrating scene with the two German women. We know the director can't have a major character and popular actor in Pitt either rape or allow someone else to rape the beautiful German women (so the final outcome's pretty predictable) - but Pitt's character basically says to his newbie recruit 'despite no indication this girl here would be willing, I'm gonna have sex with her if you don't'. Then he goes back to protecting the women when his scurvy crew show up. And what, the girl has sex with the new recruit cos he plays piano, Pitt gives her some eggs, and......um, they didn't rape her? Seriously, wtf Hollywood.
Of course we don't want one dimensional characters, so it's good to show shades of grey in a character, but you can't contradict yourself if you do. The whole scene just felt very contrived, to 'create tension', and provide the super convenient reason for the newbie to finally learn to love "killin' Nazis" (oops, wrong film?!).
On that note, the lack of time seeing the newbie actually develop, and in fact the timeline of the whole movie was terrible. The newb went from not having a clue to totally competent tank-soldier in basically two fights. I was really looking forward to a take on what combat in a tank would be like, and actually I thought this was going to be the point of the movie - show us the psychological world of living and fighting in a tank. Some of the action did tick that box for me...but otherwise, over the short time we spent with them, they seemed to be out of the tank just as often as they were in it! Das Boot this was not, lol. Makes you wonder why the director (David Ayer) made the actors prepare by living in the tank (including defecation!)...and he boasts about getting what he wants from actors, lol.
But if it was to make them into a bunch of miserable bastards then sure, that worked...but while I get it that we're supposed to see densitised men here, there's got to be *something* good about them we can like otherwise why should we care? Which reminds me, the amount of super obvious excuses provided for viciously "killin Nazis" was ridiculous. OK, we get it, Nazis are bad, SS just aren't human, yes you can now go and kill them any way you like for our entertainment, bla bla w/e. You know, it would never fly with Hollywood, but we really could do with a movie that shows WWII from the German side.
Last but not least - Ayer did something similar with End of Watch. Horrific atrocities laid on thick so you are constantly shocked by the violence and have no doubts who the bad guys are, topped off with an against-all-odds battle at the end. This is a very limited director with a nasty take on cinema, whose films I will not be paying to see, ever. A bit disturbing the ratings it's got here, and on RT.