I wanted to like this but...

Rating: 4/10 (17 May 2001)

I am a keen student of the Eastern Front and married to a Ukrainian whose father fought in "The Great Patriotic War" so I was very much looking forward to this movie...
But. It was absolutely awful! Every effort was made to ensure that the military hardware was correct but absolutely no effort had been made to to research how Russians would have acted (or in many cases looked) during the war.
One particularly risible episode: A small boy, Sacha, has been spying on the Germans but he's caught and hanged. Later a political commisar is atttempting to get the boy's mother to join an evacuation of civilians prior to an expected German offensive. The mother refuses. In a "noble" gesture the commisar lies and says that Sacha has defected to the Germans.

Now, in real life the mother would have been (a) terrified of reprisals but also (b) mortified that her son did not die fighting the fascist scum. In EatG she is overjoyed that her son is safe with the Germans and leaves her home without further delay.
Still it was marginally better than Saving Private Ryan.