Almost great----but Hollywoodized.

Rating: 5/10 (19 March 2001)

This was very close to a great war epic---right up until Paramount Pictures got to it. The horrific story starts out like Private Ryan, then degrades into your standard Hollywood War Love Triangle picture. All they needed to do was tell the story of the Zaitsev character accurately, and they were guaranteed to be in the league with Apocalypse Now and Platoon. But the marketing interests had their way, and the picture went downhill fast. Too bad---the production values were excellent, and this could have been an epic---And next time, if you are casting Russians and Germans, at least try to cast people with no accents. The English accents detracted quite a bit from the realism this movies initially establishes.