Cross Of Iron [VHS] [1977]

Central to the plot are the two main characters, the well-bred but combat inexperienced Prussian military aristocrat Stransky ( played well by Max Schell ) a fellow with an invincibilty complex still believing in the unassailable superioty of the german soldier. He represents what would have been a high percentage of the officer corp in the Wehrmacht throughout World War 2. He feels he cannot return to Germany without the Iron Cross, which he intends to get by fair means or foul.

Opposite him is the battle hardened anti-authority NCO Corporal Steiner ( played by James Coburn ) who has come to realise long ago that the campaign that decides the outcome of World War 2 for the axis powers is now doomed, and is resigned to final defeat, if not now, then in the future. His only remaining concern throughout the movie is to ensure that both he and all the remaining members of his platoon survive the war. His anger at the stupidity of continuing to fight for a doomed, flawed cause is directed primarily at the officer corp, for which Stransky makes a particularly good outlet, although as the film progresses, Steiner falls out with the one officer ( played by a thoroughly defeated and disinterested James Mason ) who quietly has similar views to him and has granted him unusual freedoms in the past.

In an interesting and probably coincidental reflection of german fortunes on the eastern front, the conflict between Steiner and Stransky closely mirrors the historical political wrangling between the Nazi party, German Army and their war production efforts that in many ways may have cost Germany the war.

The films' central themes of brutality, horror and the low price of human lives are supported by a plot revealing betrayal, cowardice, some humanity, but then revenge, murder and a determination to live in a film which reaches a nasty climax in which a fair majority of the characters in Steiner's platoon meet a grisly end when it seems they might just escape. The film, probably rightly, leaves you with a sense of regret, the bitter taste of defeat, but most importantly the notion that war is a senseless, amoral waste of young mens lives that nothing can justify.

Overall, the films set pieces are staged excellently with Peckinpah's trademark slow motion deaths littered throughout the movie, and with a combined German / English team behind the production, technical accuracy is generally superb throughout ( with one exception - although it is true to say that only a few hundred of the T34-85s had been delivered to the Red Army in late 1943, there is a scene where the Red Army commit an entire company of these new vehicles to overrun Steiner's battalion and force a rout from their entrenched positions, when in fact these were all employed to keep Germany's exhausted Panzer divisions on the back foot right up till the war's end. )

The film gets a 5/5, and is a must-see movie for anyone interested in World War 2 films with real grit.