Tunnel Rats

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.

People thought he could never do.. but he did and this is the best film he has made so far.

Uwe Boll the German director who has be come known for the creation of some of the worst films in history. And most of them were video game adaptations.

But maybe Postal was the beginning of a transformation. it wasn't a very good film but at least it had some very good bits. Far cry was better but still not great.

Tunnel Rats is good. though its not that great and still some visible cracks but at least its the cracks are not so wide. the dialogue is still full of problems but the plot is rather good. the action is intense and meaningful.

the film was even very moving at times. I wanted to find problems with the movie but found more good points rather than bad points. which is rare in a Uwe Boll film. many of the characters were still 2 Dimensional but the music,action,plot made up for many of the mistakes.

Some war films about Vietnam show the power of the American army, but this film at least shows the Americans being kicked about which I have only seen in Platoon.

Uwe Boll has made a film and it is not a bad film.

I understand we're to suspend belief and all artistic license with movies .... However..... As a period war drama you have to maintain a minimal veil of reality.

I can only guess the people that rated this movie highly weren't adults during the actual war.

Tunnel rats were handpicked short stature soliders. Half the cast looks like they play basketball. 36 tunnel rats died during the entire war. Apparently a third of them died in this one tunnel alone!

The firebase is set up like a weekend campsite with no perimeter defense. Absurd. Almost absurd as the soliders that defend the base by standing as tall as they can and running around until they get shot in the head.

Sorry. As a war movie it just doesn't make it.

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.

One of the more unique aspects of the Vietnam War was the manner in which the Viet Cong had built a series of long tunnels in certain areas of the country with the most famous being in the Cu-Chi district just outside of Saigon. So when I saw a film that was based on this feature of the war I was instantly drawn to it. Unfortunately, I really shouldn't have bothered as this film was extremely disappointing in a number of ways. For starters, the size of the soldiers featured in this movie is all wrong as none of them fit the parameters necessary to be a tunnel rat. The fact was that the normal Viet Cong soldier was typically short and thin and the tunnels were deliberately made to barely accommodate them. So in order to be a tunnel rat one generally had to be-short and thin. Another strange scene involved the manner in which the base camp was set right in the middle of the jungle with no clearing, concertina wire, machine gun posts, claymore mines or anybody apparently guarding the perimeter. Again, that isn't how the American Army operated. Speaking of machine guns, in one particular scene one of the soldiers is firing an M60 from his hip while standing in the open. Well, maybe that's how Rambo might have done it but generally the first thing an American soldier is trained to do is to immediately find cover or concealment when under attack and the M60 machine gun is typically fired from the prone position. That's why it has a bipod. Be that as it may, there are plenty of other errors within this film but the main thing I didn't care for was the overall story itself as it didn't seem to have a point. Yes, war is hell. But it wasn't necessary to use 96 minutes to convey that message. At least, I didn't think so and for the reasons just mentioned I have rated this film accordingly. Below average.