1968 Tunnel Rats

I never went through boot camp. I've never been in the military. I've certainly never been sent overseas into a war zone.

However, throughout this movie I found myself constantly wondering 'Why are they doing that?' For example: Though it makes for better lighting for the actor-- While crawling around in a tunnel, full of hidden enemies, it doesn't seem like it would take much training to know that shining your flashlight in your face instead of down the tunnel, just doesn't seem very smart.

Not to mention using a flashlight without a red filter(to preserve night vision) seems doubly not that smart.

Or soldiers who have fought tooth and nail to survive, only to stand like they are watching fireworks while bombs land on their heads.

The only movie I can think of that features such inept soldiers is the last Hills Have Eyes 2 remake, but they were just in training, which is where this unit should have been left.

It is very easy to hate on anything that Uwe Boll does, and it is clear that most people here are taking this path of least resistance and jumping that same wagon. However, it takes a greater person to admit when they were wrong and give credit when it is due, and it most certainly due. If one really wanted to, they could pick apart the historical accuracy of the film, or the tactics, or the costuming, or the geography; I am sure that such people could easily find some justification for condemning this film.

On the other hand, what would follow would be a trite listing of errors and complaints, tarted up with clever comments and sealed with some witty remark. Is that what proper film critique is about? It doesn't take much in the way of intelligence to attack and destroy what you see before you. That is why people do it so easily and without thought. In a way, this film touches on that very human failing. So many film goers and critics (professional and armchair) are going to dismiss this film as if it is some plague carrier, and only because of the name that goes with it. I feel sorry for those people because they will miss out on a great many interesting and even inspiring film experiences in their life time.

Tunnel Rats is one such experience. It is a small production and done very succinctly and without much extraneous posturing. From the first scene, the film gets right down to business and doesn't really let up until the gripping and downright mortifying ending. Perhaps it is the small size of the production that has kept Boll honest somewhat. I can imagine that when contracted to make Hollywood films, there is a lot of pressure to appeal to the attention deficit audiences out there, often the very ones that hate him, and therefore he aims too far above his mark.

In this film he hits the mark very confidently and professionally. It is worth seeing this film, and doing so without preconception or judgment. Boll is just the director and a film is a sum of its parts, even though Boll directed this film, there were dozens of earnest and hardworking actors and crew members putting in their all to make this film. It is the hight of arrogance to laugh at their efforts and belittle what they made when truly there is nothing really wrong with it.

I hope that enough people are see this film so that Boll can keep doing what he enjoys and sharing it with people. Every film, when made earnestly, has something worthwhile to show us. Stay free of the popularist hate for Uwe Boll and see films for what they are.

First of all, I am no Boll-Fan nor Boll-Basher but some year back I heard about him and his awful movie adaptions of Videogames. I saw "Alone In The Dark" (first Boll Flick for me) and after it was finished i thought the movie could have been better, the worst thing is that the way the movie was cut together was just bad, in all Actionscenes i thought "What the Hell". Sometimes I couldn't even tell what was going on or what the director tried to say with his scene. Second one I saw was "Postal" much better than "Alone In The Dark" better cut together and even some good laughs, but still, Postal is a bit strange too.

Then yesterday I watched "Tunnel Rats". I always thought that Vietnam was the most interesting war for warmovies and I loved the PC-Game "Vietcong" with the Underground-Tunnel Levels. If I would have to go in such a narrow tunnel with traps, I would probably die of Fear. The Scenes in the Tunnels are mostly Dark, which I hate about Movies, but in this one I was okay with these many dark scenes. The hole time i feared with the soldiers in the Tunnels. Some Actionscenes above Ground are still a bit strange cut and don't look to good but i absolutely loved the moments in the Tunnels, and the most time they are in the Tunnels. I NEVER would have thought it but Uwe made a Movie i really liked. The Tunnels Scenes are suspense, full with terror and very brutal but realistic. I would really like to shake your hand Herr Boll and I hope you will improve even more!

I Bet if this movie would have been a Secret Project and no one would know if it was a Boll Movie, much more Cinemas would have played it and the Rating would bet at least 5.5-6.0 Stars! 65% of the Ratings given to Boll Movies are from Bashers and Fools who just rate 1 because they "know" the movies must be bad! I saw two Boll movies and agreed: Bad Director not the right feeling for Cuts etc. but I gave him another chance, and so should you. THIS MOVIE IS MUCH BETTER THAN THE 4.2 STARS SHOWN.

"1968 Tunnel Rats" makes a brutal statement about the horrors of war and pulls no punches. Unlike many Hollywood epics which purport to teach their lessons through clever manipulations of the heart, this is no coming-of-age film or family drama couched in a setting of battle. Writer/director Uwe Boll has created a film which is very simply about the futility of war, in this case, set in the jungles of Vietnam.

North Vietnamese fighters dug tunnels, sometimes hundreds of miles long, in which they hid, lived, and carried out surprise missions against the Americans. After an ambush of several members of his squad, Sergeant Vic Hollowborn (Michael Pare) returns to the area with a ragtag group of Army soldiers to avenge their deaths. These young men, some barely out of high school, walk blindly into a world they've never known.

The ensemble cast does what they need to do -- this is not as much of a character-driven piece as other films of this genre, and the improvised dialogue isn't Hollywood war movie fluff. I've never been in battle but I hope the soldiers in the film are realistically depicted. They certainly aren't romanticized a la "Apocalypse Now." Pare's Sergeant Hollowborn is an effective leader, a man who makes his own rules and expects his men to follow them. Other standouts include Nate Parker as Private Jim Lidford, who thinks his urban roots make him tough enough to breeze through this assignment, and Rocky Marquette as Private Terence Verano, the sweet baby-faced kid who exemplifies what made this particular war so intolerable for American mothers -- he clearly doesn't belong here (not that anybody does). Lidford ought to be back on the basketball court on the corner and Verano ought to be back on the beaches of Lake Michigan. Among the North Vietnamese "enemies," watch for Jane Le as young mother Vo Mai. Her heartwrenching performance will stay with you long after the credits roll.

The look is stark and the action unrelenting. The lighting is subdued -- dark and dirty, much like the jungle landscape and tunnels themselves. Opening credits are accompanied by the Zager & Evans' classic "In the Year 2525," which had me deceptively smiling from the start. Jessica de Rooij's score turns ominous after that and was one of the highlights of the movie. But what stood out the most for me was the camera-work of Mathias Neumann. From the copious use of crane shots, as if we are hiding up in the trees ready to pounce, to the hand-held closeups in the tunnel sequences, there is no relief. Visual effects are topnotch and breathtaking. But with few exceptions, "1968 Tunnel Rats" does not rely on sweeping vistas and long shots of masses of soldiers readying for battle. And it doesn't need to. This is about hand-to-hand combat, literally, and the claustrophobic setting is palpable.

Shot on location in South Africa, Boll put all the actors through a boot camp with actual mercenaries prior to filming. This wasn't a "Hollywood" boot camp, referring to the usual type of training actors go through before a war movie. No, they were trained by men who literally had been out killing just a few days beforehand. Filmmakers, cast, and crew all took this project seriously and it shows.

This film may be difficult to watch but it's too compelling to turn away. There isn't a lot to laugh at, although the characters are well-developed enough that we get to know their hopes and fears. It's also definitely a war movie in the true sense of the genre, with heavy political undertones. But It doesn't try to be all things to all people. "1968 Tunnel Rats" is dark and dirty and about as serious as a film can get. If writer/director Uwe Boll is trying send a message, it comes through loud and clear.

If you're looking for an intricate plot, look elsewhere. If you're looking for feel-good, shoot-em-up action, look elsewhere. If you're looking for the latest sugar-pill rom-com with Sandra Bullock, why are you even reading this? In Uwe Boll's stunning "Tunnel Rats," the increasingly interesting (but still no less maligned) German director has made what essentially amounts to a chronicle of the madness of war told in a confined, claustrophobic, and frighteningly intimate way. The concept and plot (a platoon of American soldiers uncovering underground tunnels built by the Viet Cong to stage ambushes) are one and the same; and the metaphors paralleling confined spaces to the erosion of sanity are strong--hysteria is very viscerally believable here. While the character introductions and subsequent dialogs may strike notes of familiarity to the seasoned connoisseur of cinematic warfare, it's the unfamiliarity of the cast (with Boll regular Michael Pare being the only 'name' actor present) that makes it all stick; the lack of name actors only heightens the suspense, especially after they've earned our sympathy. To see these young men trapped in confined, booby-trapped spaces (with nothing but a revolver and a flashlight) is the stuff of nightmares, even more so than "The Descent" a few years back. The film maintains a bleak, free-form nihilism throughout, its plot (much like the war it's invoking) a jagged sequence of events rather than a simple matter of connect-the-dots conflict resolution. Tough, hypnotic, and refreshingly free of contrived stylistic symbolism, "Tunnel Rats" could very well be Uwe Boll's masterpiece.

7.5 out of 10