Tunnel Rats (2008)
WMB Rating:
(4 votes, average: 2.25 out of 5) 
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During the Vietnam War, the Tunnel Rats (Wikipedia Link) were tasked with infiltrating the enemy’s vast network of underground tunnels and hideouts. Not a job for just anyone. In Uwe Boll’s Tunnel Rats, we get a glimpse at what it might have been like to have that job.
Just a glimpse, though. Let’s just get it right out in the open. As a Vietnam-Action movie, Tunnel Rats is right there. The underground scenes are just brutal, scary, and just as I imagined they would be. With no place to go but forward or back, these guys had to literally come face to face with whatever they found down there, and often went in…. and never came out again.
But there are a lot of problems with the movie that unfortunately overshadow everything else. To start, I can’t remember a single name of any of the characters. I realized this near the end, when I was thinking, “WTF was this guy’s name again?” Kind of hard to get behind a character when you can’t remember his name. I’m sure they were all mentioned, but it must not have been enough.
The other bit, which I still don’t quite understand, is how the entire firebase raid scene played into the overall plot. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but to me that all happened rather suddenly, and for no particular reason. It just didn’t fit. It didn’t help that the above ground scenes during this part of the movie felt rushed, and corny.
But as I said, the parts of the movie following the guys as they raid the tunnels are the bright points (or dark points, depending on how you want to look at it.) If you need a reason to see Tunnel Rats, this should be it. Although the final tunnel scene seemed a little too “let’s be friends now, mmKay?” for my tastes. Again, came out of nowhere….
As for the picture/audio quality, I watched Tunnel Rats via NetFlix’s Instant Watch on my Roku box, so I wasn’t getting the full DVD resolution or audio. It was excellent for the medium, but I don’t really think I was missing all that much.
Despite how much I liked the tunnel bits, I have to give Tunnel Rats a 5/10. See it for those parts, and forget the rest, along with the characters’ names!
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