Brutality of War

Rating: 7/10 (19 March 2001)

This film never stops to let one catch his breath! Except for the unnecessary love interest. The scenery, the multitude of actors, the combat are all magnificent. For those who are buffs of WW2, they will not be put off by the fact that the real Vassily Zaitsev looked more like Bob Hoskins than Jude Law, or the real killing of Major Koenig was done because Zaitsev was more clever in hunting down Koenig than Koenig was hunting down Zaitsev [Zaitsev's fatal shot was into a darkened area of a building that he correctly surmised was where Koenig had to be.] That notwithstanding, the film was a gripping account of a handful of people caught up in what was probably the most horrific battle in recorded history. Ed Harris was fantastic in his understated role as the war-weary Major Koenig, made more stark by his pulling down the train window shades on the trainload of shattered German soldiers across from him, and the irony that these battered men were the real lucky ones: they were leaving the hell-hole of Stalingrad. Bob Hoskins was brilliant as Nikita Kruschev and his energy carried the political suasion; the men who sent young men out into battle with the admonition that when the man in front of them was killed they were to pick up his rifle and carry on. I do not think that in this stage of the war, the Russians were quite as willing to send out cannon fodder (ten Russians for each German)as they were at the outset of Barbarossa in June of 1941. But the battle scenes and the Russians shooting their own retreating soldiers, brought back for me the state of affairs that faced the Russians in June 1941, and the rude welcome surviving POWS got when they returned to Mother Russia after the war. The scenes in Stalingrad were as real as it got 59 years ago. A fine film, despite a few problems. It affected my wife, who found it hard to sleep that night with the thought of the slaughter in a war that could have easily been prevented.