Reviewing Movies

Movie studios are getting more strident about promoting Blu-Ray. It would seem obvious they'd prefer to convert everybody to a single format so that they need produce only one version. Every disk has a promo for the Blu-Ray version and the packaging here highlights the fact that there are more supplements on the other format. Am I alone in finding it ironic that at the same time one is offered a free download copy of the movie one is also subjected to multiple screens warning against that very practise. The number of previews that automatically pop up before one gets to the feature seems endless and increasingly it gets more difficult to bypass them. But enough carping about packaging.

Brad Pitt produced and starred in this film but he wisely left it to someone else to direct. He's put on weight since the famous abs scene in Thelma and Louise but the camera is at pains to show off that though less defined they're still there. Pitt, of course, plays the leader of this tank crew.

The packaging again invokes Saving Private Ryan and Platoon in promoting a film about a tank crew in the closing months of WW#2. The blood and guts are graphic and we get to see them through the eyes of a raw recruit played by Logan Lerman. Shia LaBoef who played Harrison Ford's wise-cracking son in a recent Indiana Jones outing is barely recognizable as a Bible quoting/hymn singing fanatic. Although this is supposed to be an ensemble piece about the camaraderie of a 5-man tank crew it is obviously Pitt's movie.

War is hell but the message that a few men can make a difference and never give up have rarely been made more plainly. Their tank is home to these men and we join them even if we can't smell the gasoline and exhaust. We may be armchair soldiers but the experience appears realistic.