Blu-Ray Review: Riveting ‘Lebanon’ Offers Claustrophobic View of War

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CHICAGO – It’s not hard to imagine viewers of “Lebanon” starting to sweat. It is a claustrophobic tale of war that has drawn deserved comparisons to Wolfgang Peterson’s brilliant “Das Boot” and it is nearly as good a film. This surreal nightmare stands as one of the better war films of the last several years and deserves a much broader international audience than it has yet achieved.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0

The reason for the audience claustrophobia is simple — almost the entirety of “Lebanon,” the winner of the prestigious Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, takes place inside a tank. We see out through the sights of the machine just like one of the young men in it but even that offers only part of the picture. The tank itself becomes a symbol for war as it becomes unstable along with the fearful boys inside it. Samuel Moaz’s riveting film has barely found a domestic audience and this is undeniably tough material for the masses but if you found “The Hurt Locker” edge-of-your-seat material than it’s unlikely you wouldn’t think the same of this excellent work.

Lebanon was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on January 18th, 2011
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Home Video

Samuel Moaz served in the war in Lebanon and brings his personal experiences to bear in his script and direction of the film that bears the same name. “Lebanon” takes place on the first day of the war in 1982. The viewer is essentially a fifth passenger in the tank that holds a commander, gunner, driver, and loader. The gunner is naive, young, and scared. Too scared to fire when he needs to. The commander may not be fully sane. The driver does not really know what he’s doing.

As the tank rolls through a town that’s supposed to be empty, all Hell breaks loose. Explosions, gunfire, screaming women and children — it is an absolute nightmare. And then comes the silence. The tank has been nearly destroyed and the men inside it are tasked with trying to get it out of town, knowing that it could completely break down or even explode at any moment. And then there’s more gunfire. And then night falls.

Clearly, “Lebanon” is not for the faint of heart. It is a heart-pounding nightmare of an experience that culminates in scenes that will stop your breath. Much like the Oscar-winning sequences in “The Hurt Locker,” “Lebanon” is a visceral, gut-wrenching experience. Don’t miss it.

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o Notes On a War Film

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com