I knew nothing about this movie coming in for the world premiere. It was a chance for me to meet Uwe Boll for a Q&A before the movie. I was disappointed to find out that he was doing the Q&A via a webcam. The event was being held at Downtown Independent, which was holding an Uwe Boll festival, a two-day marathon of his works including Far Cry, Postal, BloodRayne and Alone in the Dark.
As much as it pains me to say it, this movie is pretty decent. Tunnel Rats is a movie that came out of left field from one of the most detested film makers in recent history, considering most of his popular, or unpopular movies were poor video game adaptations. Tunnel Rats follows a small unit of American soldiers during the Vietnam War fighting their enemies in an endless underground tunnel. The Vietnamese soldiers would use these tunnels to amount surprise attacks.
After the killing of many of their fellow troops by the VCs, the unit decides to execute their revenge by finding these tunnels and killing them all off. The soldiers would realize later on that their efforts would be futile. The point of the movie is to show you that war isn’t glamorous or poetic. In war, nobody’s a winner. You never know who’s going to make it out alive, and that’s what I like about this movie. None of the characters came out all gung-ho or heroic.
The battle itself is very gruesome. You get soldiers getting impaled through their necks and a Vietcong’s neck being snapped during a hanging. There’s a very disturbing scene where one of the soldiers was surrounded by dead enemies in the tunnel. The only way through for him was to hack the enemy into pieces in order for him to get through the tunnel. Some people might be put off by the tunnel scenes, and there are a lot of them, because of the repetition of the soldiers getting lost in them throughout the movie.
The acting in the movie is very raw. Uwe Boll said in the Q&A that he wanted the dialogue to come off as real, so he had the actors improv. It’s a pretty cool idea, but sometimes the dialogue can come off as cheesy, especially in the scene where this one soldier who doesn’t believe in Jesus finally says in his last words with a smile, “I see Jesus.”
The biggest gripe I have with the movie is the casting of non-Vietnamese actors to play Vietnamese actors. Since I’m Vietnamese, I was able to spot all the fake ones and in the end, only one actor was able to speak Vietnamese. In one scene, a female VC would encounter a male VC, and during that whole scene, not one Vietnamese dialogue was spoken; only eye contact and eating.
This film is a big improvement from his previous movies and I hope to see Boll take his future movies more seriously. I’m just really surprised that Boll was able to pull out a decent movie. But will this movie be enough to turn heads? Is the hatred for Boll too strong for him to become mainstream? I don’t know, but what I do know is that nothing can stop Boll and he will continue to make movies as long as he still lives.
Grade: C+
And here’s the Q&A with Uwe Boll talking about his experience with Tunnel Rats and upcoming film projects like Bloodrayne 3.
Uwe Boll Q&A Part 1
Uwe Boll Q&A Part 2
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