Tank Commandos (1959) is an aggravating movie in a weird way. It's a very, very low budget WWII film with a fairly simple premise. The Americans are trying to capture a German-held town during the Italian campaign. But the Germans are somehow able to keep bringin reinforcements over a river despite the fact that all the bridges have been blown. An American demolitions squad has to find out how this is being accomplished and put a stop to it--hopefully by blowing something up, since that's what they are good at.
We actually get to see what the Germans are up to in the opening scene. They are using a bridge built just barely underneath the surface of the river--keeping it hidden from view but still allowing German tanks to drive across. A young Italian boy also sees this, then dodges German soldiers by ducking down a sewer. When he comes up, he's in the middle of a firefight and gets brought away by the American squad.
It's all good stuff as far as the plot is concerned. And I'm okay with the filmmakers using then-modern M60 tanks to stand in for German tanks. (I'm assuming they were borrowed from the National Guard.) This is unavoidable in most war movies from this time. The small arms, at least, looked reasonably accurate.
Where the movie fails is in character and dialogue. Gee whiz, the melodrama flies thicker than bullets. Potentially strong scenes that could have generated honest emotion simply fall flat because of awkward dialogue and wooden acting. For instance, the commander of the demo squad spends a scene telling a nurse how much it hurts to see any of his men die. That's a perfectly good idea--it's cliched, but only because it's a reflection of real emotion felt by good men in a war. It's a concept that has been used effectively in many war films. Here, though, neither the actors or the script are up to the job. The scene simply comes across as empty (and slightly painful) melodrama and you want nothing more than for it to end so we can get back to shooting at Germans.
Later, a soldier meets an Italian woman while on patrol and has a moment in which the two seem to connect, only to have another American soldier accidentally shoot her. Once again, a good idea ruined by sub-par acting and dialogue.
But, darn it, it's a black-and-white movie set during World War II with a good plot buried in their somewhere. Eventually, the Americans learn that the Italian boy knows where the underwater bridge is located. He leads them through the sewers, with the Americans wearing the Scuba equipment they'll need to plant explosives on the bridge after they reach the river. But they encounter Germans in the sewers, giving us some action scenes in an unusual setting. There's an important character death that I did not see coming.
By the way, I know the scuba gear the Americans are using is anachronistic, but I'm okay with that simply because it looks cool.
So, in the end, I can't make up my mind about this movie. Do I like it for a good plot, black-and-white photography and some nifty action scenes? Do I dislike it because of an overdose of melodrama and bad dialogue? I can't make up my mind.
I don't know if I'll go so far as to watch it again to find out. Here it is--watch it yourselves and tell me what you think:
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