Bloody Sam's Last Hurrah

Rating: 6/10 (17 November 2009)

By the time he got around to directing a World War II movie, Sam Peckinpah was a shell of his old self. Yet even in his advanced state of alcoholism and mental collapse, Peckinpah could find moments of glory, especially when the subject rallied his attention. Such is "Cross Of Iron".
It's the spring of 1943, and in a southwestern section of Russia near the Black Sea a platoon of German soldiers struggle to stay alive. Leading them is Steiner (James Coburn), a crusty but sympathetic non-com who quickly finds himself on the bad side of his new commander, the incompetent, glory-seeking Captain Stransky (Maximilian Schell).
"Men like Steiner are our last hope, and in that sense he is truly a most dangerous man," observes another, more reasonable officer (David Warner).
He certainly kills well. Working for both Hitler and Peckinpah, you expect nothing less.
"Cross Of Iron"'s agenda isn't clear. "Anti-war", yes, but with Germans as a nominal rooting interest and Russians storming the front, it's also a world where warfare is the only reality. There's a lot of idle banter about the ugliness of conflict, uttered by men we can only assume were happier about it when they were winning. We see a lot of death while Steiner looks on in stoic agony, a representation of the Peckinpah ideal in all its stark nihilism. He even turns his back on a tryst with the gorgeous Senta Berger to return to the front, this despite the pains Peckinpah and Coburn take to register Steiner's distaste for the cause of the Third Reich.
Peckinpah has a way of turning weaknesses into strengths on screen. The film is so sordid in its life-is-cheap aesthetic it becomes more visceral even as it becomes less coherent. Peckinpah embraces the ugliness of his surroundings here, of bad teeth and bodies pancaked under tank treads, until the very pointlessness of the visuals becomes a kind of point that resonates long after film's end.
In his Hen's Tooth DVD commentary, Stephen Prince makes many sharp observations. One regards the blurred, muddy look of the film, realized by cinematographer John Coquillon. Coquillon and Peckinpah worked together on the similarly grim "Straw Dogs", and Prince notes how well Coquillion brought out the chilly, expressionist side of Peckinpah just as Lucien Ballard captured something more lyrical.
Two sequences show Peckinpah's still-sharp editing prowess. The opening scene features Steiner and his platoon taking out a Soviet mortar position with quick cuts that seem to catch moments of death on the off beat; later we see similar dispatch in a stealth attack on a bridge.
Except in these smaller moments, though, the film never gels. Often the film goes too far in search of random profundities. One hospital-based scene cross-cuts between convalescents attacking a bowl of salad and Steiner dancing with a nurse. Warner and James Mason are wasted as a kind of Greek chorus bemoaning the tide of war between slugs of Mosel. A Russian prisoner is gunned down while Steiner cries out in overplayed anguish. I don't even want to begin trying to explain a sequence where Steiner's squad face a group of female Russian soldiers; it simply doesn't work on any level and runs ten long minutes.
Enough does work to keep you watching. Coburn is a rough diamond, maintaining a fragile cool that gives this film a solid center. Its look is hard and surprisingly authentic considering its legendary budget problems. "Cross Of Iron" isn't great, sometimes it's not even good; but its sordid sensibility and ruthless aesthetic resonate with the power of its one-of-a-kind director.