A few theatrics to emphasize the bigger picture

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2015)

This war film set in Germany during World War II succeeds on all levels, and I think it was meant to do so.
In order to do that, we get a few theatrics in the form of what appear to be coincidences, but in actuality aren't so coincidental.
The theatrics of this tank being the only one to survive a big blow out battle of tanks is simply the result of one tank surviving. It happens to be this one. When one takes that into consideration, one realizes there is nothing really special about the five man crew or its commander.
After that, we get a lot of realism and gore on the order of Private Ryan. What this and Ryan do that other war films don't do, is simply relate the gore without either glorifying it or reveling in it. We don't get immediate results of death, but we don't get the modern era reveling of seeing how long a burning human can scream either. It's all done on a relatively realistic scale.
And that's what makes this action war film on a par with Ryan. In really has no more coincidences in it than Ryan does, a film that bends over backwards to save anyone from New York or California, magically unable to be hit by bullets, as Hollywood likes to do, However, the end game does have the cliché of "order of deaths" pretty much down, but one coincidence is to be expected in a melee of violence.
The characters are probably even better than Ryan's characters. There are obvious similarities, whether on purpose or not, who knows? Sometimes a script may linger in a writer's mind for decades before it's penned, so there's no sense in trying to make too much of that. Certainly better than the cartoon cutouts of movies like Big Red One and Bastards.
A mixture of many war film elements should satisfy everyone, and this passes all the tests. Will it pass the test of time? Have to wait 100 years to find out.