A fine film, but over-rated

Rating: 7/10 (12 October 2005)

Europeans love to talk up this film as a great WWII spectacle- so I got tired of some posters on this board lauding it as the greatest war film ever, and decided to actually buy it and see what all the hype was about
So what's really going on here? First of all, it is a good WWII film. There is a lot of good action here, good production values, and a good film altogether
At the same time, people give this film way too much credit- What I don't like: 1) It follows the tired "All Quiet on the Western Front"/"Cross of Iron" etc genre where-by all German grunts are noble warriors (except for token bad-seed suck-up NCO) led by evil officers, and are slain one-by-one as the situation deteriorates 2) The Germans are portrayed too positively. Sure, many German soldiers in WWII were good people- I'm not debating that- but this movie really seems to propogandize things and make all of the German grunts look like good people that wouldn't want to terrorize the Stalingrad residents. That is naive to say the least 3) There isn't a lot of action. Budget constraints maybe? C'mon- we're talking the meat-grinder that was Stalingrad- at the height of the fighting the Germans were taking 20,000 KIA a week (and the Russians were probably taking more)- yet this is more of a drama than an action movie, and that doesn't sit well with war-mongers like me. If you want drama, go to A&E. If you want to make a great war film, you need great battle scenes- and the combat is certainly lacking, especially in light of the film's running time