a review of 隧道之鼠

After falling out of the public eye due to a string of bad movies and even worse behavior, what a lot of people don't know is that Uwe Boll kept working. The only people to really watch these films were the morbidly curious or gluttons for punishment like myself, as they were large in part just as lamentable as anything else he had made. However, among those who stuck around there are select few titles that have garnered some positive reception. The two most notable being Rampage and this. Now, I've enjoyed a few Uwe Boll flicks in my time. The first In the Name of the King is a guilty pleasure and I found Far Cry to be legitimately likable. That being said, they aren't "good" movies. I just happen to appreciate them. So I've never quite been able to wrap my mind around the idea of him having actually created something of genuine quality and artistic merit. Rampage, despite often being considered his best work and a decent effort in my own eyes, ultimately wasn't able to convince me it was possible. Tunnel Rats on the other hand made a pretty nice case for itself. Set in Vietnam during the Tết Offensive, the film shows what it was like for the soldiers tasked with infiltrating and clearing the labyrinth of tunnels located under the Củ Chi District. Which during the war were a claustrophobic hellscape of booby traps and surprise attacks. Boll pulled no punches when it came to portraying the kind of gruesome fates so many encountered while crawling through the miles of confined spaces. There's some deadly new obstacle waiting around every corner allowing the brutality on this front of the conflict to be fully explored. My one and only complaint with the action is that with it taking place almost entirely underground a few of the early scenes are a pinch too dark. Like any self respecting war movie the opening chapter is dedicated to introducing viewers to the squad and establishing them as real people. It's effective at humanizing everyone onscreen, but I still walked away not particularly caring about any one of them and was honestly a little bored. It did make me respect the cast though. Apparently Boll shot this without a script so every line of dialog was improvised. Which is impressive as, outside of one scene where two actors were clearly interested in having entirely different conversations, the conjured on the spot dialog usually feels very natural. They're awkward death chokes on the other hand, not so much. This is by no means Apocalypse Now, but it is a solidly executed film that covers a lesser known side of the Vietnam campaign. You can tell Boll was inspired by the true greats that have covered this subject. The panning shots of a helicopter flying over the jungle right at the beginning look like the work of a director with far more credibility to his name and it's an honest-to-goodness, no nonsense piece of filmmaking that avoids his usual trashiness to the point where you would think he had some actual talent at this kind of thing. Make no mistake, if Uwe Boll ever made a truly good movie it's this one.