Rating: R
Genre:
War
Release Date: 02/01/2000
Dubbed: English
Run Time: 128 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Not For Children
Distributor/Studio: Henstooth Video
A quote from
Bertolt Brecht ends this bitter and angry
war film by
Sam Peckinpah: "Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again."
Peckinpah's intense and belligerently non-commercial work, (based on the book by
Willi Heinrich), is a World War II tale told from the German perspective, following a platoon of German soldiers in the Russia of 1943, when the German Wehrmacht forces had been decimated and the Germans were retreating along the Russian front.
James Coburn is
Steiner, a German corporal and recipient of the Iron Cross who feels that he owes his loyalty to his family and fellow soldiers and not to
Hitler and the German war machine. But when a new commander,
Captain Stransky (
Maximillian Schell), takes over the platoon,
Steiner and
Stransky come into immediate conflict.
Stransky is a career soldier, the complete opposite of
Steiner, and a man who pledges himself heart and soul to
Hitler and the war. But he envies
Steiner for having been awarded an Iron Cross and deeply desires one himself. The problem is
Stransky is a complete coward and recognizes that the only way he can be awarded an Iron Cross would be to get the bitter
Steiner on his side.
~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
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