Tank (1984)

Sadly Over-hyped

How sad is this?

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Sergeant Major Zack Carey is in a local bar when a corrupt Deputy Sheriff starts slapping around a prostitute. The Sergeant comes to her defense and ends up beating up the deputy. The Sheriff sees this as a reflection on him and attempts to persecute Carey. When Carey stands up to the Sheriff, the Sheriff plants drugs on Carey's son and tells Carey he will send his son to a prison camp if the Sergeant Major does not give him a large sum of money in a payoff. Sergeant Carey pays him off, but the Sheriff reneges, takes the money and sends the Sergeant's son to the prison camp. The Sheriff also hints that Carey's son will be raped in the camp. The Sergeant Major has had enough and takes off in his restored Sherman Tank in order to break his son out of the camp and cross the state line so he can get fair justice. This is a strange movie. It has some very dark moments yet it has some laugh out loud moments due to some very funny dialogue. The film has a rousing, silly ending.It's hard not to like any movie with the great James Garner in it. G.D. Spradling is very good as the evil Sheriff. The WWII era Sherman Tank is also fun to watch, especially when the Sergeant Major destroys the Sheriff's office.

It's as though they switched genres in the middle of the movie from drama to comedy. There's a good beginning building Zack as a tough as nails Master Sargent who is a stand up guy. Standing up for what's right in a corrupt town, including the Mayor and Police, gets him into trouble with the locals. When the mayor finds he can't touch Zack, he goes after his son, sending him to a brutal work camp on trumped up drug charges. Zack goes off in his tank to free his son and somewhere after the breakout the movie falls apart. Prior to this point, it seems there was no attempt to get a laugh, now, every cliché in the book is worked in at the cost of any pretense of seriousness

I didn't see this when it came out, so when it appeared on cable late one night I didn't expect very much. But it exceeded my expectations. It's the story of an honorable man who is pushed too far.Yes, there are some stretches of the imagination to be made. For example, with all the gunfire, I don't remember anybody getting killed or seriously wounded. The good guys are too good and the bad guys are too bad.But I enjoyed a few scenes a great deal. For one, the portrayal of the small town, that seems idyllic at first but is rotten to the core. I especially appreciated the scenes between Sgt. Carey and his son, the way that the military was shown pulling together as a family, and the others who help the group trying to get to the state line. These were all people that I wanted to cheer for.

If you can ignore the dopey ending, the movie has some very nice surprises best of which is the incredible performance of GD Spradlin as the sheriff. This may be a lightweight movie but he does not throw away his role. He's genuinely scary and believable as the tyrannical sheriff. Jenilee Harrison is also at her most sexy in 1984. She was a mouthwatering beauty back then! The film rolls along pretty blandly but the scenes with C. Thomas Howell getting framed are pretty well done and plausible. If you can get over the guy owning his own Sherman tank, the decision to use it makes at least some sense by that point in the movie.