Stalingrad

Bondarchuk is quite famous film director in Russia. This film of his obviously is a little step forward for post Soviet cinema. Some German characters, especially main protagonist are depicted in a human way in contrary to familiar image of a German solder as animal, coward and rapist.But Soviet solders in the film remain as in old Soviet movies. They are all brave, unstoppable hardcore yet loving, tender warriors. Battle scenes are professionally recreated, shot and edited and used mostly to glue together the rest of the film, which are mostly long monologues or dialogs of the various characters and landscapes of covered in ash ruins of the city. Cast is great. Great faces, costumes and prop installations. Much effort to make this film great fails however short of success. Story lines runs unevenly and very weak at times. Message of the film is unclear.And what really brings it down are unnecessary comments by voice over telling us of horrors committed by German solders. old habits of Soviet propaganda never die ?? Pity really.

Actually, this film MUST not have its name. There is nothing about Stalingrad battle... Yes, cute pictures how burned Soviet soldiers attacking German positions and slow-motion hand-to-hand battles looks nice, but that is nothing related to real history of this battle.

In terms of scale the film does not give the answer at least about one local engagement in Stalingrad in WW2, especially if take into account that there were a lot of such events. Heroes behaves really strange and illogical sometimes. Very messy scene where commander made hysteric about killed German soldier who came for water. "Even animals do not devour each other at the watering!" he says. What? Hey, director, haven't you seen "Animal planet"?..

So the good name for this film is "Saving girl Katya", but not "Stalingrad". It's just a director's fantasies about THE WAR, and how does he see it, but there is nothing related to Stalingrad battle at all. Now we can easily change decorations and make film with same mental content named "Berlin" or "Kiev", because we could simply imagine the same "war story" anywhere. So, why Stalingrad?..

WWII gets the 300 treatment as our fantastic heroes defeat the nasty Germans, sometimes single handedly killing a dozen men each in slow motion blood spraying hand to hand combat. It's that realistic, especially as Russians apparently keep fighting even when completely consumed by flames.

The defenders of Stalingrad were courageous real people but this belittles them as two dimensional action heroes.

A lot of effort and budget was put into making this but it was ill spent, there is no reflection, no feeling, no humanity, it is hollow. If you want to see a film about Stalingrad look up the earlier German film.

For the story, I give this movie a 5/10. I was a little bored by it. However, for the fighting, this movie gets a 8/10. This movie has some of the best fighting scenes I have ever seen. The visuals also are truly some of the best I have ever seen. Any future war movie needs to borrow from this movies visuals. I can't overstate how blown away visually the combat was.

This movie deserves better than a 5.6. I can understand a low rating for the boring scenes in between the fighting, but its just too low for what its really worth. It is clear this movie missed the mark in delivering a good story as well as making us truly love the characters who were rather still good. More fighting and less sitting around would have done this movie far better.

Unfortunately, this movie turned out to be what I expected from a Russian produced film about the Great Patriotic War. The film depicts the heroic soldiers and sailors of the Soviet Union fighting to the death the barbaric fascist invaders. The Soviet defenders are almost all saintly; one is even nicknamed Angel. The Germans are all beastly underlined by the atrocities they commit on screen against the surprisingly large number of Russian civilians living in the middle of the battlefield. This movie compares unfavorably with the German produced movie Stalingrad and Enemy at the Gates because of its simplicity. The only scenes that I found interesting showed the Germans preparing to attack and those which depicted the Soviets crossing the Volga. I have great difficulty recommending this movie especially considering alternatives.