Peckinpah at his best

Rating: 9/10 (29 August 2005)

Peckinpah at his best. And for sure he is among the best. One of the better war movies ever. War is war not pvt Ryan. No heroics please. No pity, no false pity, just what it is. A moral fresco. Maybe from all great movies from Sam Peckinpah this is the most achieved. The kid's accidental killing is difficult to forget. James Coburn in one of the better performances of his career, and then there is Mason, Mason performs a colonel much better than his Rommel. Nothing is what it seems to be. Finally, the subject is not war, not even its horrors, but man, man under limit situations. A critique of moral conditions, a critique of social inequalities. Worth to see. Worth to think about it.