Tank Movie Reviews

In alphabetical order, here is a list of films which tell the story of a single tank and it's crew.

Fury (USA)
Dir: David Ayer. 2014.
Set in the western European theatre of World War Two, this film about an American Sherman tank probably had highest budget on this list. As is often the case with more contermporary films, a lot of attention to accurate historical details was undertaken, but the story deviated from realism into fantasy on several occaisions, no doubt catering to American patriotic tendences. This is a common feature of war movies unfortunately and it is more or less a staple of tank movies it seems.
Brad Pitt has star billing but the primary character is a young soldier sent to replace a dead machine gunner on the tank 'Fury'. The audience follows the last days of this tank and its war weary crew as it takes part in the invasion of Germany, culminating in a desperate last stand which raised my eye brows a few times and not in a good way. Like almost all WW2 movies, 'Fury' depicts the Germans in a stereotypically stupid fashion. On the whole though this is a decent movie which offers a few moments of inspiration for war gamers. There is an interesting skirmish in the first half of the film where a Sherman platoon takes on a German Pak line which could be inspiration for a good game, and later the same unit meets and is largely defeated by a single Tiger tank - apparently manned by amateurs. 
4/5

Lebanon (Israel)
Dir: Samuel Maoz. 2009.
In an entirely different vein to the other participants in this list, this movie almost disregards the tank, and focuses entirely on the crew with almost the entire film taking place within the vehicle and with only the gunner's view through his scope to show events taking place outside. I was not looking forward to seeing this film since I thought it would be long and dull and I expected the 'psychological drama' aspect to be the usual stuff of war films. It was, but the film didn't drag as much as I'd expected.
On the whole this was an interesting film, though it offers nothing at all for wargamers.
The Israeli conscript crew of a Centurion tank, call-signed 'Rhino', are taking part in a special operation during the 1982 Lebanon War. Assigned to give cover to a small detachment of paratroopers on a mission, the tank crew find themselves witnessing (through their gun sights) and participating in the various horrors and moral ambiguities of war. The film depicts the effects these traumatic events take on the crew within the claustrophobic confines of the tank. There is less patriotism in this film than in the others, and the tankers are depicted as almost being scared beyond reason. 
3/5

Sahara (USA)
Dir: Zoltán Korda. 1943.
By far the oldest offering on this list, this film is pure, naked war propaganda. Starring Humphrey Bogart, the story follows an American M3 Lee tank (nick named Lulu Belle) which has gotten itself lost in the Sahara desert during the aftermath of the Battle of Gazala. As they struggle to make it back to their lines, the crew encounters and picks up a number of stragglers, all of whom come from different national and ethnic back grounds. Eventually the tank is engaged by a German Bf-109. The plane manages to wound a British soldier but is itself shot down and its pilot is captured.
The climax of the story comes when the tank reaches a well, only to find it is running dry. Shortly after this, a German unit, also looking for water, arrives and Bogart being the classic American war hero, a battle ensues.
If you like old war movies, and you don't mind blind patriotisc bias, then this is a classic. Of some interest are the background stories of the various characters and the tensions these give rise to. The final battle is not particularly well done, but it would make for a good skirmish battle in 28mm scale. 
3/5

T-34. (Russia) 
Dir: Aleksey Sidorov. 2019.
One might almost describe 'T-34' as a Russian version of 'Fury', though the Russian love of patriotic bias far outweighs the American and this film suffers from a lot of bias. As it happens however, this is perhaps the best film on the list from the tank-gamers perspective. In particular, the initial battle in the first act is brilliantly well done, with plenty of bird's eye perspectives, slow motion shell tracking and historical accuracy as far as the eye can see. A German unit of Panzer IIs, IIIs and a Panzer 38t attack a Russian village defended by a single infantry platoon and a lone T-34/76. The Soviet tank uses cover and surprise to defeat the Germans in as good a depiction as I've ever seen of the benefits of a defensive posture.
After the initial battle however, things take a turn for the worse. The Soviets are all dead or captured and the main character - the Soviet tank commander spends the next few years in German POW camps, being tortured because he won't give up his name and rank. Apparently this goes on for three years or so. Things start to get really silly when the bearded German commander from the first act returns. Now clean shaved and scarred, he is tasked with training a new generation of German tankers, to be equipped with Panther tanks and to defend the Reich against the coming Soviet invasion. To do this he gets the bright idea of using captured Soviet tankers, in captured Soviet tanks as live fire training-ground targets. Very quickly he finds his old adversary and gives him a captured T-34/85. Since the Germans are also incredibly stupid in this film it turns out that they have overseen six rounds of tank ammunition inside the tank, thus allowing the Soviets to suddenly break out of the training ground and make a run for it. I won't spoil what happens after this, but rest assured, Russian patriots must love this movie!
3/5

The Beast of War. (USA)
Dir: Kevin Reynolds. 1988.
This one is quite interesting since it turns the tables some what and instead of being about how amazingly good 'our tankers' are, its all about how awful the Soviets were. Clearly made with the same romantic sentiments about the Afghan Mujahideen one sees in other 80s films (Rambo, The Living Daylights, etc) the story begins with a Soviet T-55 platoon attacking a village and slaughtering almost every one in it. Why they are doing this is never really explained, but the films goes to some lengths to portray the Soviet tankers as a depraved band of degenerates who will blindly follow any order, no matter how immoral. Things go from bad to worse when after the attack, one of the tanks takes a wrong turn in the hills and gets lost. The tank rumbles into a valley with no other exit and is soon being pursued by Afghan Mujahideen hell bent on revenge.
On board the T-55 are five crew members, one of whom is an Afghan communist, another is a degraded intelligence officer (this one might be described as the film's protagonist), two low IQ tankers who constantly squabble with each other, and the tank commander who is an absolute psychopath. As the film progresses, the commander takes to singling out and killing his own men, for 'reasons'. Eventually the commander leaves the former intelligence officer tied to a boulder with a grenade booby trap under his head. The Afghans find him but due to their Pashtun code of honour they do not kill him and he ends up joining forces with them in order to defeat the tank commander.
In some ways this is a rather surreal film, and if you look aside from the sillier apsects, it does have some redeeming features. The desert ambience and the sense of a lone tank rumbling through a vast wilderness is well done. The premise of the film, one tank in a hostile terrain, versus a group of very mobile infantry - with an RPG - could make for a decent skirmish game, especially in 10mm.
An interesting detail worth mentioning, is that the movie was filmed in Israel and as a consequence of that, the T-55 was a captured Arab tank which the Israeli's had subsequently upgunned with a bigger 120mm main gun.
3/5

White Tiger (Russia)
Dir: Karen Shakhnazarov. 2012.
This one deviates from the rest in a few ways. The titular Tiger is the antagonst which the Soviet crew must find and destroy. With more than a touch of the supernatural, this movie is essentially a Russian version of Moby Dick, only with tanks - as you might expect from Russia. 
Set in 1943, the story begins with the discovery of a Russian tanker who is found sitting inside a destroyed T34 with 90% burns all over his body. No one expects him to live but miraculously he makes a full physical recovery. His mind however has apparently been seriously impacted and he has no memory of who he is. The doctors take to calling him Ivan Naydёnov, and decide that despite his amnesia he is still capable of returning to the front.
Naydёnov it transpires is the sole survivor of a battle in which an entire unit of Soviet tanks has been destroyed by a single Tiger tank in winter camouflage - a Tiger tank which apparently has supernatural powers of combat and maneuvre and which mysterously disapears into swampy terrain after each encounter. The Soviets build an up-armoured T-34/85 and Naydёnov and his small crew are deployed to hunt down and destroy the 'White Tiger'. 
Just as with almost every other Russian war film I have ever seen, this offers a curious mixture of realistic detail and fantastic story-telling and by fantastic I mean of course that this is pure fantasy. If you like Soviet tanks of the Second World War however, this is a film for you. The second half features SU-100s, SU-152s and an entire company of T-34/85s at full charge. This is also the first Russian film I've seen that shows lend-lease vehicles, I guess the Russians never throw anything away!
3/5