A good movie

Since this movie won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film festival, I was really eager to check it out. It was quite a striking war movie, all taking place in a tank, except for a couple of shots, and it gave a similar feeling of claustrophoby you had while watching the seminal classic ‘Das Boot’. Here, this feeling is even worse since the soldiers have even less space but, at least, you could say that they were not underwater. Unsurprisingly, the director, Samuel Maoz was himself a gunner in one of those tanks during this conflict so the whole thing felt really realistic and relentless. Still, somehow, it didn’t completely grab me. First of all, I’m not really familiar with this conflict, how it all started, for how long and how it all ended. Honestly, it might sound stupid, but it is only half way through that I discovered that it was actually an Israeli tank. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter who is in there or why they ended up here. It is all about some average fellows like you and I who ended up in a big metal box who have to try survive by killing someone else which they don’t even know. To conclude, even though it might not be as great as ‘Das Boot’, it remains a very original war feature and it is definitely worth a look.

7/10