Writer: Samuel Maoz
Lead Role: Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen
Music by : Nicolas Becker, Benoît Delbecq
Director of photography : Giora Bejach
Language: English
IMDB
Plot:
June, 1982 - The First Lebanon War. A lone tank and a infantry platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town - a simple mission that turns into a nightmare. The four members of a tank crew find themselves in a violent situation that they cannot handle. Motivated by fear and the basic instinct of survival, they desperately try not to lose themselves in the most emblematic act of uncivilized problem solving: war.
Review:
It's not as unrealistic as some here claim!
by
partykristian
IMDb member since April 2007
Having seen this film getting slaughtered in a number of threads here I'm going to post the opposite view:
I just saw this picture and I think some people are too caught up in the usual American war movies to get the big picture.
The war that the film describes is one that put heavy demands on the Israeli war machine, forcing them to spread their assets as thin as possible. The soldiers in the tank are young conscripts, not heavily trained long-time professional soldiers, although I suspect the paratroopers to be.
The gunner says that he has never shot at anything but barrels/drums before. He's probably fresh out of tank school. The others have been soldiers longer, one says he's getting out in 2 weeks. I believe the conscript period in Israel was 48 months at the time. Why are they getting a new gunner on the crew? Who knows, perhaps the last one was killed in action?
The tank had probably seen action for some time already, and due to the ongoing war hadn't been serviced properly - hence the goo on the floor. I'm guessing a mixture of hydraulic fluid and coolant leaking from damage caused by a previous hit or maybe crashing into something like a house at speed. There are a zillion things in a tank that uses hydraulics to operate and any one can spring a leak. There isn't inches of it on the floor, just a thin film - you can see this when the cigarette butt hits the floor. Hydraulic fluid used by the miltary isn't flammable, btw. Note the smoke inside the tank upon startup of the engine. This shouldn't normally be there, either. Another example that the assets were spread thin is that they didn't have proper field rations to eat, they were having bread crutons, which by the way is the stuff you see all over the tank interior after the RPG hit.
The interiour seems cavernous - and it is: The Merkava is the only real tank that also doubles as a personell carrier - it has room for a small platoon in the back. The crew space up front and in the turret is much more cramped.
They were peeing in an ammo box that one of the crew empties on the floor at the beginning of the movie. You can see that the fluid level isn't very high in this shot, also.
I'm a little unsure about the open hatch. This semmed like an invitation to hand grenades getting thrown in. Maybe they ran this way when they were surrounded by a friendly platoon. Wouldn't surprise me if there was some field rumor running around about soldiers burnning to death after a hit and not getting the hatch open to escape.
Unrealistic for the tank to be operating alone and without a supply train? remember, not everybody operates like the US Army. The distances are very short in this part of the world and these tanks have decent range compared to many others. The enemy didn't have tanks in the same way as Israel and the battles weren't fought with hundreds of tanks blazing along Desert Storm-style. They were sent in to support the paratrooper platoon sweeping through a small town. I'll bet the next town over had another platoon with their tank, and so on.
In an open terrain campaign the tanks would pave the way and the soldiers would seek cover behind it, this is true. But this was house-to-house action. How are you going to do this with a tank? It was there for heavy firepower and for observing with it's scope and night-vision, yet the basic mission tasks were handled by the soldiers on foot. Note that during the evacuation the tank goes first after the Mercedes, with the guys on foot following behind.
Unprofessional and really, really annoying crew? Sure, that's exactly what they are - and this is an important part of the movie's message.
View the movie with open eyes - don't fault it for not trying to be a hundred other movies. It depicts real events and is made by people who were actually there!
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