Peckinpah puts you in the trenches.

Rating: 9/10 (27 March 2010)

Sam Peckinpah's films always seem to leave a lasting impression on me and his brilliantly audacious and harrowing anti-war account "Cross of Iron" simply had me thinking of his classic western "The Wild Bunch". Both focused on a dying breed of men, hoping for better times in a changing environment and let's not forget the sweat, the blood and the male comradeship. Peckinpah's humidly brute if candid war drama takes on the point of view of a weary battalion of German soldiers on the front line against the advancing Russian military towards the end of the Second World War. The raging testosterone is evident, from the use of a hardy script, hard-bitten performances weaved together by a genuine rapport and the gratuitous shots of raw violence, as Peckinpah is not afraid to show blood and guts spilling out with numerous ear-splitting explosions and rapid gunfire raging throughout. However there's something rather beautifully voluptuous in the way he engineers it, as it comes across as poetry in motion or a wet dream in its exciting barrage of pumped up machismo, but also taking time out for some more lighter touches too. He has always been a great visualiser, where the arrestingly intense action is grounded with an authentic tough as nails edge that never loses sight of the brutal outcome it engraves -- psychically and mentally. Running through the jadedly versatile story is an unflinching moral card, but its angle on classes (feuding rivalry between German officers in who really deserves heroic credit --- even begs the question why the glorification in a losing war and the ones who should be held up our those unknown soldiers fighting up front) and the motivations behind individuals only goes on to make it more so powerful (with the ironic ending cementing it), jolting and deep in its impulsive structure and emotional arcs by not only concentrating on the cynical acts, but the innocent face of war. While gritty and blunt, it remains technically sharp and is effectively photographed like the spectacular slow-motion during the large-scale battle sequences. Maybe a little too long in the tooth, but it never lets up for it two hour plus running time. James Coburn heads up the cast in a magnificently tough-skinned performance and across from him is a dominating Maximilian Schell. Also there's sensational humane support from the likes of Klaus Löwitsch, James Mason and a bitter looking David Warner.