A fight for their own desperate lives.

Rating: Null/10 (1 July 1999)

In this Sam Peckinpah film a German platoon is fighting against growing odds as the crack of doom begins to widen against Germany in WWII. Their combat engagements are on the eastern front against the Russians. Maximilian Schell is cast as an aristocratic officer who cares only about winning an Iron Cross for family pride. James Coburn is Sergeant Steiner a decorated soldier and leader of the group much like "Kat" in All Quiet on the Western Front who could care less about his decorations. James Mason as Colonel Brandt is an officer who knows the war is essentially lost but goes through the motions because he's a professional career officer and that's what's expected of him. David Warner as Captain Kiesel is burned out from war and has become oblivious to it's horrors. This is a film that requires the viewer to watch and watch with concentration to get the full meaning. Like other Peckinpah films it has violence but the violence is second to the story of men who fight not for the glory of the German Army or the Third Reich or the Fatherland but for their own desperate lives.