I just finished watching Cross of Iron for I think the 4th time ever. And I have to rate this a 4 out of 5 star movie.

It is made by Sam Peckinpah(sp?) and starred James Coburn, Maximillian Schell, James Mason, and David Warner.

It was POV of the lowly squad of german infantry lead by Sgt Steiner (Coburn) on the Eastern Front in WWII and it is VERY gritty and violent, yet does not become an apologia for the Nazi's. It shows in a rather even handed way that BOTH sides were capable of and having commited atrocities within the confines of the average soldiers of that era and particular portion of the conflict.

The battle scenes are reasonably realistic and you are drawn into the characters, heroic or not.

I think this is one of the finest war movies almost on par with "The Longest Day", "Band of Brothers", and "Firebase Gloria"

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Great film. Another two that you must watch are Winter War (Finnish War Film) and Stalingard (Russian War Film). Both are great movies.

I have started a similar post some time ago about this movie:

Cross of Iron

There is only one thing to it: this is one hell of a movie. Superb acting, superb eye for detail, superb story. The book ends different, but the movie is one of the first from German perspective.... Great!

p.s. 5.56 Have you ever seen the German film "Stalingrad". This is certainly worth your time, I recommend it!

Been wanting to watch that one. Folks tell me it's great. But my favorite has to be Winter War. It's a Finnish Film with english subtitles. Great movie about the Finns and how they kicked the asses of the Soviets.

I have seen "Stalingrad". It's great movie...better than a sniper movie, "Enemy at the Gate", in my opinion. I need to watch "Winter War" and "Cross of Iron". It's sound interesting.

To tell you the truth, I didn't care for Cross of Iron or Stalingrad. When talking German films, Das Boot blows them both out of the water (no pun intended).

Winter War and Stalingrad? I will look out for these the next trip to the video store.

Other than "Aleksandr Nevsky" (sp??? ) and "Battleship Potemkin", I have not seen too many Russian films of a military nature. I have only seen them each once, but AN really blew me away (I was 14 when I saw that).

DonP

Stalingrad was a pretty good film actually. Well worth watching.
Didn't really like Cross of Iron though, especially the ending... the ending really sucked. It was one of those attempts at being artistic that just don't fit with war movies.
Das Boot of course is great.

Das Boot and Stalingrad were directed by the same person and both use suspence to the max. The endless waiting gave me the creeps and I was happy I sat in a comfortable chair. What made Stalingrad special for me was that it was the first time you saw something about the penal battalions the Germans used a lot!
The ending of Cross of Iron was that the money ran out. Peckinpah had to improvise and with the means he had, he didn't do to bad. Then again that is just my opinion. If he had followed to book it would have ended totally different, much more raw then it does now!

All 3 are great films. Wish Enemy at the gates was up there with the realism as opposed to hollywood fantasy!