Landship, Opening in the UK

When former greengrocer Captain Donald Richardson named his tank after “Fray Bentos,” the UK equivalent to spam in the 1910s, it was maybe too fitting. If he had it to do over, he might have chose something different. His crew definitely felt like spam in a can when the Fray Bentos was trapped and besieged for nearly three days during the Battle of Passchendaele. Richardson and his tanker crew fight against the odds to resist the German onslaught in Callum Burn’s Landship, which opens today in UK theaters.

At this point, the Germans had still not captured an intact Mark IV tank. It is easy to see why they were eager to. Burn makes it look like Doctor Who’s Tardis—bigger on the inside than the outside. Of course, Burn and his design team had to do so, to facilitate filming scenes inside the Fray Bentos. Regardless, when the UK tank teeters over, lodging itself into a mortar crater, the surrounding Germans would be highly motivated to secure the tank.

Some crew-members argue in favor of abandoning the tank, but the miserable weather (this was Passchendaele, remember), likely makes flight just as perilous as entrenchment. Of course, Richardson is in command and he is not about to surrender the Fray Bentos. Unfortunately, he is not the sort of officer who inspires confidence or loyalty his enlisted soldiers. Nevertheless, he starts to earn some begrudging credit after putting himself in harms way several times during the standoff.

Instead of “Upstairs, Downstairs,” Landship is sort of an “inside, outside” film. Inside, it is an uncompromisingly realistic depiction of soldiers working in close quarters, under extreme pressure. Outside, it is an eerily surreal hellscape, obscured by shadow and mist, in which gas-masking-donning Germans attack in waves, like zombie hordes.

Landship is not a special effects driven production, but Callum and company make the best of what they’ve got. Vin Hawke also contributes an excellent performance as Richardson, expressing the burdens and insecurities of command, from an officer who never expected such responsibility. David Dobson also has some very effective scenes as 2LT George Hill, Richardson’s junior officer, who understands how to offer constructive criticism. The enlisted men largely represent stock characters, but the supporting cast looks uniformly credible as the beleaguered and bloodied tankers.

At a time when New York is poised to elect an extremist who denigrated military service to Congress, Landship shows viewers just how much muck and pain average Allied soldiers endured for their country. This was the generation before the Greatest Generation, both of whom utterly shame current generations. Recommended for the grit and the way it believably captures the arbitrary chaos of war, Landship opens today (6/26) in the UK.