Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
The German World War II film ‘Der Tiger’ (English title: The Tank) follows a five-people secret mission to go into the front lines and fetch a man suspected to be a Russian spy. Set in 1943, right after the Battle of Stalingrad, when the tides started to turn against the Nazis, the stakes are dangerously high for the men. Can the one tank crew really survive their solo mission?
David Schütter plays Lieutenant Philip Gerkens, the leader of the mission, and actors Laurence Rupp, Leonard Kunz, Sebastian Urzendowsky, and Yoran Leicher play his subordinates. The opening scene of ‘Der Tiger’ shows them fighting hard against Soviet Forces in their tank on a bridge, even as most of their other comrades begin to retreat. They miraculously survive the skirmish, barely make it out alive, and are sent on a mission that makes little sense to them.
“Orders are orders.”
That’s the simple commandment each soldier needs to live by, so the protagonists of ‘Der Tiger’ quietly do what they’re told, even though murmurs of dissent begin to brew within the small crew. The it hardly seems worth the risk to go find a man that might not even be alive across a route crawling with ruthless enemies, hidden mines, and booby traps.
While the cinematography for ‘Der Tiger’ is visually just as engaging as most other World War films, the one thing director Dennis Gansel struggles with through most of the runtime is being able to establish a solid emotional connection between his characters and the audience. Viewers get to know precious little about the men manning the tank except for some personality quirks.
The focus instead is on their psychological state and the challenges they face while hurtling towards what seems like a certain death. David Schütter as Lieutenant Philip Gerkens himself has doubts about the mission, and is constantly zoning out to the past. His character is consumed by guilt, trauma, and regret for the horrible atrocities his men commit against civilians. So yes, even though we see war from the German perspective, they aren’t glorified in any way. Instead, the narrative often makes you mistrust the main characters.
Yoran Leicher as Michel, the youngest in the crew, doesn’t look a day older than 17 stands out best in ‘Der Tiger’ in a nail-biting scene when he is working on disarming a mine: his paralyzing fear is palpable within seconds, he has no idea when he could blow into pieces, yet he quietly carries his orders, not letting his terror overrun his sense of duty.
Laurence Rupp’s Christian Weller is the only one with a rebellious streak, someone who doesn’t believe in blindly following orders. He is an Austrian keen on going back home and he openly challenges Philip’s leadership, constantly questioning why they must undertake such an arduous journey, one laden with corpses of those who didn’t survive the war. In fact, it’s a question that haunts the viewer too.
In the climactic moments, Lieutenant Philip and team finally reach a bunker which is much larger than one would expect, setting off a chain of events that seems implausible, but are explained by a big twist which comes as a rude surprise. It’s a twist that quickly makes sense, is foreshadowed extremely well, yet, just feels like a major letdown. For the twist to work as a satisfactory end, there needed to be more exposition or back-story to the central protagonists.
In the current structure of the ‘Der Tiger’, it feels like the creators cheat the viewers with a philosophical/metaphorical device, instead of delivering a gritty war story grounded in reality. I was watching the film with a younger cousin who screamed out in frustration at the end and said ‘this was a 7 on 10 for me at the beginning but now I won’t give it more than a 4’. Well, at least my disappointment wasn’t as massive. if you’re looking for an anti-war film from the German perspective, this is a decent one time watch.
Rating: 6 on 10. Watch ‘Der Tiger’ on Prime Video.
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