I have just one thing to tell you and that's the person that you stabbed in the back is a solider!

Rating: 8/10 (25 July 2012)

***SPOILERS*** Kirk Douglas at his teeth grinding and eye popping best was never better as French Army Colonel Dax who's put in a dilemma in trying to save three of his men Cpl. Paris, Ralph Meeker, Pvt. Auban, Joe Turkel, and Pvt. Ferol, Timothy Carey, from being executed for cowardice to cover-up the mindless and disastrous mistakes of their superior officer scare faced General Mireau, George Mecready.
It's 1916 and there's a two year stalemate on the Western Front with the German and French armies locked into bloody combat with tens of thousands of men being killed and wounded in the fighting. Told by his boss General Broulard, Adolphe Menjou, to take the blood soaked Anthill from German hands Gen. Mireau at first is taken back by his superior's almost insane demand. The Anthill has been in German hands for the last two years despite being bombarded and assaulted by hundreds of thousand of French combat troops who were beaten back at every attempt; Suffering tens of thousand of casualties! Now Gen. Broulard expects Gen. Mireau to get the job done in one day with only a regiment of 8,000 French war weary and shell shocked troops!
As expected the assault on The Anthill was a total disaster with the Germans mowing down those French troopers who went over the top of the trenches as well as pinning down the French reserves who were supposed to do the mopping up after them. At the height of the fighting Gen. Mireau frustrated that his men, whom almost 90% were either dead wounded and no longer combat ready, weren't getting the job done ordered his own artillery units to bombarded them in order to get them to move forward! It's later when looking for a scapegoat for both his Gen. Mireau and his superior Gen. Broulard's failures it's decided to take three French soldiers involved in the failed assault on the Anthill, Cpl. Paris Pvt. Auban & Pvt. Ferol, and make them pay with their lives for their mistakes! Volunteering to defend his men in a military style kangaroo court Col.Dax knows that he's up against it in getting his clients, the three condemned French soldiers, off. But still hopes that he can at least get them to tell their stories and maybe just maybe get some sympathy from those robot-like French officers judging them. Which in fact turned out to be a task ever more difficult if not as impossible then his men taking the Anthill!
***SPOILERS*** Great courtroom drama with Col.Dax getting stymied at every turn by the French Army brass in saving his men from execution. It's disgusting to watch how those French officers in charge of the "trial" didn't give a lick about the men whom they were judging not at all caring if they were or were not cowards under fire but doing everything to clear the real culprit's in this matter, the disastrous assault on the Anthill, Gen Broulard & Gen. Mireau from any responsibility! You don't have to guess what the results of the trial for the three condemned French soldiers was but there indeed was a real big surprise waiting for us in what happened later on in the film. Like rats turning on each other Gen. Broulard exposed Gen. Mireu's insane decision to kill his own men, by artillery fire, as some sort of revenge against them for not fully obeying his insane order to move ahead in a kamikaze like suicide assault against murderous German machine-gun and artillery fire. It turned out to be a small victory of sorts on Col. Dax's part in that he was the person who informed Gen, Broulard, with documented proof, of Gen.Mireau deranged order. But it came far too late to save the men that he was defending!
P.S As for the devious and back stabbing Gen. Broulard who was even more responsible for the disastrous Anthill assault the Gn. Mireau he ended up washing his hands of the whole messy matter which was the biggest outrage of all the other outrages in the entire film!