Brutal

Rating: Null/10 (7 February 2004)

This is the most painful war movie ever made and the most audacious because an 'evil' people are the main characters. Who would ever make a movie from the perspective of a Wehrmacht soldier nowadays with the threat of frivolous litigation abound?
No one. This film takes those risks that are beyond the pale of many others devoted for the mainstream social rebellion and political causes too redundant to develop.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW:
Women are shot, men are hurt in their most vulnerable places and evil deeds go unpunished, though that is subject to debate, and shell shock is exhibited as in the hospital scenes where James Coburn sees the bullsh't for the truth of his wretchedness. And the ambitions of officers are not always pleasant as the Prussian aristocrat has Coburn's warren shot because he wants the Iron Cross for his personal honor, friendly-fire that is not accidental.
Some of the reasons producers abandoned financing Peckinpah's war on historical stereotyping must of been connected to the distance we try to separate ourselves from the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. Humans are what they do not where and when they were born, but capable of tremendous evil and also good.
Due to the disgusting visuals and hoarse film stock the humanity is restored to these doomed soldiers of the Great Patriotic War even as they die much like the Wild Bunch.
8/10 The less humorous Kelly's Heroes or The Thin Red Line but searing drama