Vietnam 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.

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.

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.

What am I supposed to say about a war film made by Uwe Boll? I know the man by reputation alone and this is my first venture into his film-making domain. It seems he's brought about quite an aura for horrifically bad films, and yet there I was watching Tunnel Rats and genuinely thinking it was a good effort. Am I supposed to sit here and say it's a horrid, pointless mess of fast edits and nonsensical action running on a paper thin script complete with horrid acting? Should that sort of summary be synonymous with a Uwe Boll war film? Well surprise, surprise Tunnel Rats is actually a damn fine effort and it proves people are willing to jump on certain critical bandwagons just as easily as people are willing to jump on positive bandwagons.

The film succeeds in the sense it captures the madness of war as well as delivering scenes of strong, bloody violence that repulses more than it does excite as these various action set-pieces and scenarios play out. Hey, this is more than what the recent Rambo film offered when all we got was a plethora of gore and disembowelment as 'justified' warfare was played out between those poor, poor Christians and those evil, evil Burmese soldiers. The primary content and the 'tunnel rats' of the title refers to soldiers whom engage in activity you feel you'd have to be mad to partake in; an activity that is not about capturing or defending terrain; or searching out an individual alá Apocalypse Now or Saving Private Ryan, but about clearing Vietcong tunnels located beneath the battlefields.

The Tunnel Rats of the title are three jeep loads of soldiers assigned to the Củ Chi tunnel complex, Vietnam, in 1968. Their task is to clear out the tunnels surrounding their base camp – traps, enemies and all. The platoon are made up of all sorts; these are not just faceless characters called in to spawn some bloody violence/action as they 'blow some stuff up real good' for the benefit of a passive audience. Some are white, some are black; some are younger than others; some are innocent, naive and soft-bodied whereas some others feel the need to stamp authority within the group. Some even share certain religious beliefs that others do not subscribe to.

There are some points in which you want the characters whom are down in those tunnels out and 'safe' as soon as possible, then there are others during which you want them down there and 'safe' as potential danger approaches on the surface. Other times, soldiers survive the ordeal of the tunnels only to emerge and face new horrors. Boll toys with the audience in this regard, using each respective 'space' as both a safe haven and a potential death trap at various times to really good effect.

The team assigned to deal with this tunnel network share some thoughts and memories from childhood the night before they ship out to begin work. We know the tunnels are a dingy and claustrophobic space on top of a dangerous locale thanks to the opening scene. Further talk of the tunnels being death traps plays out with some characters speculating the dangers through past stories and rumour as well as how the Vietcong can 'smell' you. This makes the scenes later on when a character lights up a cigarette down there even more harrowing. The talk of the tunnels further prolongs anxiety, as the brief but memorable opening scene floats in and around our memory. The tunnels, however, remain off screen and we know what awaits the group, giving us a position of power – a position of power that is further emphasised when we witness entire scenes dedicated to the Vietcong, the American's enemy, one occurrence of which sees the camera crane directly below a Tunnel Rat to reveal a makeshift Vietcong war room.

Initially, the first tunnel is a bit of a disaster. It is a dead end and while eliminating two of the enemy, they loose three guys. The sense of failure and frustration at such a cost for so little is clearly evident, very briefly creating a helpless and desperate atmosphere in the film and in our own minds about the situation. Boll captures the horror and the cramped conditions of the tunnels perfectly. Shooting in low light and keeping his camera rock steady as his subject scurries and struggles about erratically, we feel frightened when people venture into the unknown and horrified when altercation with the enemy arises.

Boll even finds room to develop scenarios within the already established conventions by including the character of Vo Mai (Jane Le) as this frightened Vietnamese woman who lives within the tunnels with her two young children. The award winning Jane Le does a great job in portraying the fear and madness of it all. The final thirty minutes or so are pure, gripping, impressive war genre cinema. I didn't notice it beforehand, but there is a certain electronic pulsating sound effect/musical number that plays on a loop during this time, which really captures the horror and the suspense you're witnessing as people scrap for their lives – it's fascinating to watch.

Whereas Michael Bay can just fetishise action and gunfire with copious amounts of explosions and slow motion towards the end of Transformers as that becomes even more empty headed; vacuous and nonsensical than it already was, and Stallone can offer nothing bar mere break-neck action as the baddies get their comeuppance toward the conclusion of Rambo IV, Boll shows us that war is, in fact, Hell and war-zones are places you really don't ever want to be. The two respective films have high IMDb ratings close to '7'; Tunnel Rats has something bordering on '4' – looks like that Boll-hate bandwagon is in full runaway mode, whereas the Stallone/Bay-love bandwagon is on an equally slick streak. How sad.

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