1968 Tunnel Rats | |
---|---|
Directed by | Uwe Boll |
Written by | Uwe Boll |
Story by |
|
Produced by |
|
Starring |
|
Cinematography | Mathias Neumann |
Edited by | Karen Porter |
Music by | Jessica de Rooij |
Production company | |
Distributed by |
|
Release date |
|
Running time | 96 minutes |
Countries |
|
Language | English |
Budget | US$8 million |
Box office | US$35,402 |
Tunnel Rats, also known as 1968 Tunnel Rats, is a 2008 German-Canadian war suspense film written and directed by Uwe Boll. The film is based on the factual duties of tunnel rats during the Vietnam War. In a documentary for the film, Boll revealed the film did not have a script, and instead the actors improvised their lines. [1]
The box office return was poor, but Tunnel Rats was met with positive reviews.
A group of US Army soldiers, trained in underground warfare, arrive at base camp in the jungle of South Vietnam. The soldiers spend the first day and night getting to know each other. The next morning they begin to explore the Viet Cong's tunnel network at Củ Chi. Led by Lieutenant Vic Hollowborn (Michael Pare) along with Platoon Sergeant Mike Heaney (Brad Schmidt) Corporal Dan Green (Wilson Bethel) and Privates Peter Harris (Mitch Eakins), Carl Johnson (Erik Eidem), Terence Verano (Rocky Marquette), Jonathon Porterson (Garikayi Mutambirwa ), Dean Garraty (Adrian Collins), Samuel Graybridge (Brandon Fobbs), Jim Lidford (Nate Parker) and Bob Miller (Jeffery Christopher Todd).
Armed with nothing more than bayonets, pistols, grenades and flashlights, the US soldiers take to the tunnels in search and destroy operations, and begin to encounter dangers including primitive but lethal booby traps, such as punji sticks, grenades rigged with tripwire, as well as roving Viet Cong troops. Meanwhile, Garraty and Johnson are killed first, and later Sergeant Heaney and Verano are both killed as Green escapes, and up on the surface Harris and Lidford escape to the bottom of the tunnel, and Lidford is killed later on, Porterson successfully escapes through the tunnels. On the surface, the Viet Cong also attack the US base.
As things escalate above and below the ground, soldiers for both sides are pushed to the limits of their humanity. Miller and Graybridge try to escape, with the former barely making it, but Graybridge is killed. The events implicate that all (or almost all) the protagonists are killed by each other, by boobytraps, or by the airstrike ordered by the wounded US commanding officer Hollowborn, who called on it when everything seemed to have been lost. Green dies in the tunnels. Harris convinces Vo Mai (Jane Le) that he isn't a threat to her or her family. Porterson retreats to the surface and later meets Miller at the camp where many soldiers have been slaughtered by the North Vietnamese Army. Porterson and Miller witness the bombings and their ultimate fate or survival is left ambiguous. Harris and Mai try to dig their way out, slowly realizing they are both trapped with nowhere to go and had been left to die. They remain in the tunnels until the end of their days.
1968 Tunnel Rats was a box-office failure, earning less than $36,000 in ticket sales. The film's budget was $8 million.
Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid gave the film 3/4 stars and wrote "If Boll had made this film in 1986, he might have won an Oscar and become the next Oliver Stone!" [2] Bill Gibron of Filmcritic.com gave the film 3.5/5 stars, calling it "very good – and that's amazing, considering who's receiving said accolade." [3]
On the negative side, Uwe Boll won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director for his work on the film, which he also received for directing In the Name of the King and Postal .
Uwe Boll also presented a video game of the same name based on the film. It was developed by Replay Studios using the Replay engine and was released on Steam on 15 May 2009. [4]
The Viet Cong was an epithet and umbrella term to call the communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam. Formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and nominally conducted military operations under the name of the Liberation Army of South Vietnam (LASV), the movement fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the Viet Cong controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South that represented the legitimate rights of people in South Vietnam, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the modern Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a single banner.
Casualties of War is a 1989 American war drama film directed by Brian De Palma and written by David Rabe, based primarily on an article written by Daniel Lang for The New Yorker in 1969, which was later published as a book. The film stars Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn and is based on the events of the 1966 incident on Hill 192 during the Vietnam War, in which a Vietnamese woman was kidnapped from her village by a squad of American soldiers, who raped and murdered her. For the film, all names and some details of the true story were altered.
Lost Patrol, also known as The Lost Patrol, is a survival action role-playing strategy video game developed by Shadow Development and published by Ocean Software for the Amiga and Atari ST computers in 1990. An MS-DOS port by Astros Productions was published in 1991. Set during the Vietnam War, the game follows a squad of United States Army soldiers who are stranded behind enemy lines after their helicopter crashes, and must reach a U.S. military outpost for rescue.
Alone in the Dark is a 2005 action horror film directed by Uwe Boll and written by Elan Mastai, Michael Roesch, and Peter Scheerer. Based on the video game series of the same name, it stars Christian Slater, Tara Reid, and Stephen Dorff as paranormal investigators who combat a supernatural threat. The film's story is a loose adaptation of the game Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (2001).
Vietcong is a 2003 tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Pterodon in cooperation with Illusion Softworks and published by Gathering for Microsoft Windows. It is set during the Vietnam War in 1967.
Tigerland is a 2000 American war drama film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Colin Farrell. It takes place in a training camp for soldiers to be sent to the Vietnam War.
R-Point is a 2004 South Korean psychological horror war film written and directed by Kong Su-chang. Set in Vietnam in 1972, during the Vietnam War, it stars Kam Woo-sung and Son Byong-ho as members of the South Korean Army in Vietnam. Most of the movie was shot in Cambodia. Bokor Hill Station plays a prominent part of the movie, in this case doubling as a French colonial plantation. In 2011, Palisades Tartan re-released this film on DVD under the title Ghosts of War.
Operation Crimp, also known as the Battle of the Ho Bo Woods, was a joint US-Australian military operation during the Vietnam War, which took place 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of Cu Chi in Binh Duong Province, South Vietnam. The operation targeted a key Viet Cong headquarters that was believed to be concealed underground, and involved two brigades under the command of the US 1st Infantry Division, including the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment which was attached to the US 173rd Airborne Brigade. Heavy fighting resulted in significant casualties on both sides, but the combined American and Australian force was able to uncover an extensive tunnel network covering more than 200 kilometres, at the cost of 8 Australians and 14 Americans killed and 29 Australians and 76 Americans wounded.
The Phantom Blooper: A Novel of Vietnam is a 1990 novel written by Gustav Hasford and the sequel to The Short-Timers (1979). It continues to follow James T. "Joker" Davis through his Vietnam odyssey. The book was supposed to be the second of a "Vietnam Trilogy", but Hasford died before writing the third installment.
Sniper 3 is a 2004 American direct-to-video action film starring Tom Berenger, Byron Mann, Denis Arndt and John Doman. It was directed by P.J. Pesce, It is the sequel to the 2002 film Sniper 2 and is the third installment in the Sniper film series.
The Battle of Gang Toi was fought during the Vietnam War between Australian troops and the Viet Cong. The battle was one of the first engagements between the two forces during the war and occurred when A Company, 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment struck a Viet Cong bunker system defended by Company 238 in the Gang Toi Hills, in northern Bien Hoa Province. It occurred during a major joint US-Australian operation codenamed Operation Hump, involving the US 173rd Airborne Brigade, to which 1 RAR was attached. During the latter part of the operation an Australian rifle company clashed with an entrenched company-sized Viet Cong force in well-prepared defensive positions. Meanwhile, an American paratroop battalion was also heavily engaged in fighting on the other side of the Song Dong Nai.
John Franklin Baker Jr. was a United States Army Master Sergeant who served in the Vietnam War and a recipient of the Medal of Honor.
Eastern Condors is a 1987 Hong Kong action war film starring and directed by Sammo Hung. The film co-stars Yuen Biao, Joyce Godenzi, Yuen Wah, Lam Ching-ying, Yuen Woo-ping, Corey Yuen and Billy Chow. The film was released in Hong Kong on 9 July 1987.
The Siege of Firebase Gloria is a 1989 Australian war film directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, starring Wings Hauser and R. Lee Ermey. It was filmed in the Philippines.
Darfur is a 2009 American film directed by Uwe Boll concerning the War in Darfur, starring David O'Hara, Kristanna Loken, Billy Zane and Edward Furlong. The film was also released as Attack on Darfur.
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a 2009 satirical black comedy war film directed by Grant Heslov, adapted by Peter Straughan, and starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey. It was produced by Clooney's and Heslov's production company Smokehouse Pictures. The film is a fictionalized version of Jon Ronson's 2004 book of the same title of an investigation into attempts by the U.S. military to employ psychic powers as a weapon — which, in turn, is a companion to a British miniseries Crazy Rulers of the World.
Tunnel Rats: 1968 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Replay Studios as a tie-in for the Uwe Boll film 1968 Tunnel Rats. It was released for Microsoft Windows in 2009. According to an interview with Uwe Boll, the game was meant to be released on the Xbox 360, but it ultimately has never had an official retail release, and the only digital distribution store that offers the game is Steam. The story takes place after the movie's events as the player character attempts to find the original crew from the film.
Jump into Hell is a 1955 war film directed by David Butler. The film stars Jacques Sernas and Kurt Kasznar. As the first Hollywood film based on the war in French Indochina, the story is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
Operation Warzone is a 1988 American Vietnam War film.
The Nùng Autonomous Territory, also known as the Hải Ninh Autonomous Territory, the Nùng Hải Ninh Autonomous Territory, and the Nùng country, abbreviated as TAN, was an autonomous territory for the Chinese Nùng within the French Union created during the First Indochina War by the French colonial government in Indochina. During this period the French hoped to weaken the position of the Việt Minh by granting more autonomy to ethnic minorities in Vietnam in the hopes of getting more support from them in their fight against the predominantly Kinh Việt Minh, which took control of large parts of Vietnam following the August Revolution and the power vacuum that occurred following the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II.