Who Do Some People Not Like The Tank Movie?
The Tank is a recent movie that offers the gritty story of a German Tiger Tank behind enemy lines on the Eastern Front. It is beautifully filmed and fantastically acted. It also has some of the best tank battle scenes in recent movie history.
And yet many people did not like the movie.
When I initially saw the advertisements for the movie, I was intrigued. But when I saw the mixed reviews for The Tank, I had second thoughts. I almost did not watch it.
I am glad that I did.
Since people wanted to offer spoiler-free warning, they shared that for much of the movie, The Tank is a solid war movie but the cryptically stated that the ending ruined it.
Read Top 5 Recent War Movies.
The problem was not historical inaccuracies, although such in accuracies always creep in to various degrees and can ruin a movie for some.
The actual problem is that the nature of the ending seemed to come out of nowhere and take the movie in a completely unexpected and nonsensical direction. Honestly, I can understand how people would feel this way. For much of the movie, The Tank feels like it is just the German version of Fury and yet it definitely is not.
I have explained elsewhere what I believe the meaning of the ending is and so I will not do it here. What I will say is that after reflection, this was the direction The Tank was going the entire time.
This is one of those movies that continually drops hints throughout the story that tell us that things are not what they seem. I would say The Tank is more subtle than most with those hints, they are undoubtedly there.
The skeleton crew within the burned out tank. The Latin Mass being broadcast over the radio in Orthodox Russia. The crew recognizing that things were not as they were supposed to be.
I am not arguing that everyone must like the ending or even The Tank in general. What I am trying to say is that some of the dislike for the movie is based on the sudden radical change in the meaning of the movie when careful consideration reveals that audiences could have recognized the meaning almost from the beginning.
I see The Tank not as a good war movie that crashed at the end but a carefully crafted anti-war movie with a spiritual message.
