Tank 432 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Tank 432 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 17, 2017

After serving as camera operator for several films by British auteur Ben Wheatley, Nick Gillespie makes his feature debut with Tank 432, a meandering and obscure film that ultimately can't decide what it wants to be about. As the movie opens in a forest on a late autumn day, soldier Reeves (Rupert Evans), armed with his machine gun, is either fleeing from the enemy or getting ready to stave off an attack. Gillespie teases the audience by making it appear that it's being plunged into the middle of a battle à la a John Woo action picture. Reeves and the accompanying medic Karlsson (Deirdre Mullins) traverse the woods until they discover that middle-aged soldier Capper (Michael Smiley) is laid up on a tree limb with a bad gash on his leg. Captain Smith (Gordon Kennedy) barks orders for his squad unit to reconvene and they head for an abandoned compound. The balding Gantz (Steve Garry) investigates and lurks inside where he finds bug-infested corpses. As he moves into a confined room, a traumatized woman curls on the couch, badly beaten with bruises on her face. Upon escorting the poor lady outside, Gantz spots an unoccupied old jeep in front of him. In a scene recalling The Hurt Locker (2008), Gantz gingerly opens the hood to inspect if an IED has been planted...

If things couldn't get any stranger, Gantz starts seeing hooded figures with animal or gas masks. (They look like they may have wandered in from Romero's The Crazies [1973].) Are Gantz's visions real or are they merely hallucinations caused by psychedelic drugs that he may be on? Gantz and his fellow troops retreat from the forest and sidle to the foggy hills. In addition to the tormented girl, the soldiers also have two prisoners clad in orange jumpsuits that turn out to be women. Following one captive's attempted escape, everyone heads inside a very large antiquated tank (take note of the film's original title: Belly of the Bulldog) to take cover from the masked pursuers.

Chaos and confusion in the woods.

Structurally, Tank 432 is disjointed with scenes that seem to be leading up to something but end with a foil of some sort. Gillespie spends the first half hour introducing the characters rather hastily and then the last hour with most of them bickering inside the tank. Although we hear clanks on the armored vehicle from the outside, there isn't a whole lot of fear and suspense generated among the characters that is projected to the audience. Tank 432 certainly doesn't come close to equaling the sense of solitary confinement and terror-struck feelings that plagued the soldiers in Samuel Maoz's Lebanon (2009), which is also far more suspenseful, I might add. Gillespie's dialogue is pretty tedious and monotonous inside as characters repeat obscenities. He gives one female prisoner a chance to enlighten everyone when she begins talking for the first time about Kratos and its significance to Greek mythology, which she claims to have taught. But Gillespie never gives her the chance to develop this in the larger story. Are Annabella (April Pearson) and the character portrayed by Georgina Beedle really prisoners of Smith's unit? I am always open to unpacking ambiguities in films but in Tank 432, they don't really go anywhere or produce a big payoff. Gillespie doesn't have complete confidence in his material as evidenced by his inclination to cut away to poetic nature shots, which is just a perfunctory device to break up the tedium. Gillespie seems to have important things to say but he doesn't have enough of a grasp of the cinematic medium as a director to articulate them with any certitude.

Tank 432 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The IFC Midnight production of Tank 432 arrives on US Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory. The movie is presented in the aspect ratio of 2.40:1 which approximates its original theatrical exhibition on this AVC-encoded BD-25. The video streams for the main feature carry an average bitrate of 26993 kbps, with a total bitrate for the entire disc averaging 33.21 Mbps. With the exception of close-ups of flowers and other beautified images of nature, Tank 432 is a grim and bleak-looking picture. Scenes set in the hazy landscape have a visual scheme analogous to bleach bypass as well as exposure latitude containing some overexposed light. See Screenshot #s 1, 13, 14, and 15 in particular. Notice even the sunlight on the pasty faces and how Gantz's cigarette smoke adds atmosphere to this optical effect. The greens featured in the film are usually light olive or turquoise (see the tank at dusk in #5). For scenes that take place inside the tank, Gillespie suffuses the frame with a granularity that accents the grittiness of the soldiers' predicament. For the tight and much darker interior shots, contrast is not as pronounced as it is for outdoor framings. However, Gillespie also changes the look up with a light red tint (see #s 2 and 12). Tank 432 is not supposed to consist of pretty postcard moving images but this BD more than adequately replicates the original look sought by Gillespie and his cinematographer, Billy J. Jackson.

Scream has divided the movie into a dozen scene selections.

Tank 432 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scream Factory has provided options for a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix (1664 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 downmix (1664 kbps, 24-bit). To better focalize the dialogue across the center channels, viewers may opt to use the 2.0 option. I played the movie with the 5.1 mix and found myself switching on the English SDH to hear the words (See #20, subtitle example). The cast members speaker in predominantly Scottish English dialect and I wish the track had made clearer enunciation of their accents. Granted, some of the dialogue may be deliberately gibberish to add to the disorientation of certain scenes but I felt most comfortable with the SDH on throughout much of the film. Speech does become easier to discern when the characters move inside the tank, though. The bangs and thuds hammered on the steel beast produce terrific bass. I thought that both fronts and the surrounds really came to life after Gantz went inside the compound and saw flies swarm around the decapitated bodies. Nature sounds and general ambiance around the woods is satisfactorily reproduced on the 5.1.

Tank 432 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Original Theatrical Trailer (1:28, 1080p) - a 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen trailer for Tank 432 that comes with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 sound. In English, not subtitled.

• Scream Factory Bonus Trailers - three trailers for other Scream/IFC Midnight catalog titles. These all play before the main menu appears.

Tank 432 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A good number of viewers will find Tank 432 frustrating and impenetrable. It is essentially half of a full narrative and even the twist during the coda in the end credits leaves a lot to be explored. Scream Factory delivers a very strong transfer but could have put some work into improving the sound track, especially the lossless 5.1 mix. There isn't really anything in the way of extras. For fans of Ben Wheatley's films, Gillespie's Tank 432 represents a strange curiosity but not much more. First go for a RENTAL before deciding on a purchase.