Men 'O War

Rating: 10/10 (24 August 2006)

****SPOILERS**** It's spring 1943 in the Taman Peninsula with the once invincible German Army in full retreat. After the German Wehrmacht suffered a disastrous defeat at Stalingrad earlier in the year the Red Army then launched a massive 500 mile offensive along the souther sector of the Eastern Front. One of it's main objective is to recaptured the Crimea and Taman Peninsulas and it's there where the movie "Cross of Iron" takes place.
Sgt. Steiner, James Coburn, had been out on reconnaissance with his platoon and during a fire fight with the Soviet troops he captures a young Russian boy that later, instead of having him shot, not only spears his life but escorts the kid back to the Russian lines. Sgt. Seiner expecting that he'll be taken back by his comrades in the Red Army the boy soldier is instead machine gunned by the Reds before he could reached their trenches. This is how war is depicted in Sam Peckinpah's classic "Cross of Iron" cold impersonal and deadly where in the end there's no winners but only losers on both sides of the battle-line.
Undoubtaly the most shocking and effective anti, or even pro, war film ever made this side of "All Quite on the Western Front" "Cross of Iron" shows what war is really all about and how it effects by almost totally dehumanizing the men who participate in it. Taking over Steiner's company is an arrogant and pompous Prussian aristocratic jerk Capt.Humptmann Stransky, Maximilian Schell. Capt. Stransky wanted a transfer from his cushy assignment in occupied France to the bloody and hell-fire Eastern Front so he can earn himself the coveted Iron Cross. We see right away that Stransky and Steiner don't at all care for each other since in Stiner's case he already has earned an Iron Cross and is anything but overjoyed by it. Referring to the Iron Cross Sgt. Steiner says that it's just a worthless piece of medal but Capt. Stransky is so obsessed by the German war decoration that he goes so far as to blackmail one of his men Let. Triebig, Roger Fritz, to falsify a sworn statement, which Sgt. Steiner refuses to do, to testify to his courage in battle.
During one of the many battles that Steiner & Stransky participated in a Let. Meier, Igor Galo, lead a counter-attack against the attacking Reds, which cost Meier's life, repulsing and thus keeping the Russians from overrunning his infantry company's defensive positions. Stransky was hiding in his bunker during the entire Russian assault. After the dust cleared Stransky tried to get the credit that the dead Let. Meier earned by telling his superior Col. Brandt, James Mason, that it was he, Captain Stransky, who manned the guns and passed out the ammunition during he fighting not Meier.
It's later when Steiner is wounded in action and hospitalized, for a severe concussion, that Capt. Stansky's orders from Col. Brandt to receive an Iron Cross is just about finalized. Yet the very fact that Steiner is still alive and not willing to go along with the ridicules sham of Strasky being a war hero, which he's not, that leads that low-life Prussian swine to do everything in his power to not only get Steiner but his entire platoon killed in a sick act of revenge and cover-up.
Great study of how war brings the worst, as well as best, out in people. With a heroic but disenchanted Sgt. Steiner not only fighting the enemy Red Army but his own superiors. With the only thing he cares about, and is willing to give his life up for, is the men in his platoon. In the end even Sgt. Steiner's platoon, by then reduced to only two men, has no attachment to him anymore. Steiner leaves it and goes after the hated Stransky who was responsible for having it mowed down. When the platoon,together with Sgt.Steiner,tried to make it's way back to the main German lines. Caught in no-mans land in a vicious cross-fire between the Red Army and fellow German troops ,under the command of Stransky's boot-licking lackey Let. Triebig, Steiner's platoon was wiped out almost to the last man.
Triebig's own men couldn't continue, when they realized that they were shooting on their fellow German soldiers, to keep firing on Steiner's platoon with a totally outraged Steiner jumping into the trenches where Let. Triebig was trying to make a run for it. Cornering the rat after the gutless coward pleaded for his life telling Steiner that he was only following, Capt Stransky's, order. Sgt. Steiner then blasted Triebig to bits and pieces reloading his machine gun at least once as he kept pumping away. It's now left for Sgt. Steiner to come face to face with Capt. Stransky and make him answer for what he did to him and his men in his selfish quest for the Iron Cross. A medal that he planned to get at the expense of the lives of men who were far more qualified to get it then he'll ever be.
A once in a lifetime movie about war and the courage cowardice and self-sacrifice that comes along with it. An outstanding cast headed by James Coburn and Maximilian Schell leaves it's audience with a real insight of what war is really all about. As well as a unique experience of how men, and women, are changed forever by both living and suffering through it.