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.

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.

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.

Another unfortunate film meeting "we hate the director because the internet told us to" preconceptions, 1968 Tunnel Rats is a complete success in what it sets out to do - create an overwhelming sense of fear and claustrophobia.

There are war movies, and there are horror movies. This is both. Yet, there is no Predator creature jumping around, no crazy virus, no hallucinations, no. The war is scary enough itself.

There's no patriotic propaganda here, neither is there any political anti-war message, the movie just shows us how scary life as a soldier could be. This is the kind of fear which is felt by real people, every day.

A highly recommended film if you like tension and suspense. More accessible than SEED, more mature than Alone in the Dark.

As a Nam vet and former combat infantry squad leader I can tell you this movie was 80% BS. As commented on by others we don't build permanent camps in the middle of the jungle. Camps are built in areas where clear fields of fire can be created so that daylight surprise attacks like the one depicted in the movie cannot happen. There also were no jeeps riding down two tracks in the jungle, for the same obvious reason. There are so many factual errors in this flick like uni's, incorrect armaments, a unit insignia that I've never seen before, etc, etc, etc. The director obviously had no knowledge of what went on in Vietnam and he didn't bother to find out by bringing in a knowledgeable technical consultant. This movie is without question the worst Vietnam era movie ever made and one of the worst war movies of all time. The shame of it is that there is a truly gripping story to be told about guys who volunteered to be tunnel rats in the Nam and this flick failed miserably to tell that story. What's worse is from what I see on this website, far too many of you think this was some kind of representative and half way decent movie. Nothing could be further from the truth. And FYI, there were no 6 foot and 6 foot plus tunnel rats as depicted in the movie. Tunnel rats by necessity were the shortest guys who more approximated the size of the people who built and used the tunnels.