As this generation’s Ed Wood, Uwe Boll has made some truly terrible films. So how does the German director fare when he’s not making a movie based on a video game? A little better, but not as much as you’d hope. With “Tunnel Rats,” a Vietnam War flick about a group of U.S. soldiers sent to kill Viet Cong resistance fighters hiding in the jungles and tunnels of Cu Chi, Boll has proven that he isn’t quite as clueless behind the camera as he appears. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for his screenwriting skills. I’m not exactly sure who this movie is supposed to be meant for, but the Vietnamese are depicted as bloodthirsty savages and the Americans as scared morons. They act like morons, too, as they’re all systematically killed off like a bunch of teenagers in a slasher flick. I mean, if the tunnels were causing the U.S. Army so much trouble, why didn’t they just drop a couple of grenades down them instead of sending soldiers in one at a time to be brutally murdered? Boll is clearly a fan of the genre – he crams as many Vietnam War clichés into the first 20 minutes as humanely possible – but that doesn’t make him any more qualified for the job. “Tunnel Rats” may have sounded great on paper (it’s certainly an original idea for an overdone topic), but with Boll in charge, it never had a chance to succeed.
