Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Kodie Bird True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

David James first of all I've heard all the comments about the weak shot. For me this was the reason I watched it. It's a story of young men thrown into conflict with little or no training. And the whole idea of what they see from that enclosed space is for me the most compelling part of the film. As an exercise in claustrophobic atmosphere it wins hands down. This was not a big budget film this wasn't your Private Ryan this was Das Boot set in a tank. Although I agree the tactics and deployment of the tank were at best the logical and against modern warfare theories. It was done for artistic license, which you have to in these situations. More than anything from me it boiled down to a few young men making very grown-up and misinformed decisions. But isn't that the point? In Old Man's War Novel by John Scalzi he explores this very thing. And tries to make the position that until you have lived a life you cannot determine the life of another.

chaos-rampant As a war movie this is ordinary with ordinary insights, but a neat idea in terms of abstraction. We are inside a tank, this as the mind's eye, looking out at fleeting glimpses of war, moving north to madness. We share the perspective of young Israeli soldiers throughout and nothing more. We are baffled at what it's all supposed to be out there, who is on our side and where's the rest of the army. We see as they see through the viewfinder, the experience both framed and as it happens, which mirrors our own experience. The outside images are meant to unravel some of the maddening complexity of war, guerillas using human shields, a distraught mother looking for her child reaps a moment of affection, but more abstractly this: the inability of the mind to make sense of incomprehensible reality and create a narrative out of it. So I don't mind overmuch the stock characters and situations, the tank commander who loses it, the shooter with a conscience and so on. I do mind that more is not made of the self-referential nature of seeing and story, too bad because the parts are all there. Forget about Saving Ryan or Hurt Locker, this concept has tremendous power, war as mobilized by images in the eye. A great study, akin to Blowup.Imagine. A journey linking transient human reflections in the pools of water on the tank floor, to harried images of harried reality flashing by, to fixed images of images in the photos and advertising posters of the travel agency, unreal in this context. And all of them framed, transient snapshots of story, as is war, as we consume war. It's all in the film, almost, but the focus is on more predictable stuff.The ending is effective in this regard. What if there is no story out there in the universe? Where is the music coming from? What does it mean that the same godhead can imagine tanks and sunflower fields? Near the end the eye is cracked. Alas, a missed chance overall.

paul2001sw-1 A low budget Israeli war movie, 'Lebanon' tells the story of a tank crew, but we hardly ever see the outside of the tank. At times, the continual world-view-by-periscope seems a bit gimmicky, although one suspects the main rationale for the narrow focus is not artistic but financial. It does help maintain the claustrophobic atmosphere, and the central section of the film fizzes with tension. But the most horrific moments derive from the presence of a cartoonish villain, and the centrepiece of the story - about ordinary men conscripted into the role of soldier for which they are ill-prepared psychologically - lacks the subtlety, context and heart of the sublime 'Waltz with Bashir', which of course bypassed the costs of recreating a war by the use of animation as a medium. That film is great - this one has some merit, but won't really tell you anything you don't already know.

SmokeyTee I had mixed reviews prior to seeing Lebanin and sadly this was a film that lacked in many departments and I am glad I resisted ordering on blu-ray.Situated inside a tank for several claustrophobic days during the Israel-Lebanon war and seen, largely, through the gun sight of the gunner this could have been a tense, gritty film with much in common with submarine films or the decent 80's film The Beast.Some reviews I have read complained about the emotive or manipulative images or events portrayed and I share these sentiments. The camera unnaturally/gun focuses in close up on "evocative" images like corpses, a poster of the virgin mary, more corpses, crying women - the gunner is spends the film watching like a tourist providing the audience with dramatic/tragic scenes in close up. Which feels unnatural, scripted and left myself and other reviewers feeling manipulated.The grime of the tank is palpable and the soldiers become dirtier as they creep further into (or out of) contested territory. This might have been a device designed to reflect the mental state of the soldiers (and interesting) - but the psychological states of the inexperienced and uninteresting crew was beyond us. We just didn't care by the time things got tense.Perhaps if the driver's view, and the commander's, were included instead of just the gunners this might have helped the film. As it was the gunner spent the whole time turning the tank barrel to follow people in close up instead of doing his job and watching for enemies. It felt wack.Viewers that think a camera being shaken in the last word in action and that believe what is put on screen before them is implicitly true and authentic might love this film. The wife gave up at about 30min, I fast forwarded the last 20 min.Get The Beast out or watch Das Boot again instead...