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Yar, you be here: Cross of Iron > Customer Reviews Cross of Iron Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 41 Reviews)Boring, dull, pointless
Here's a brief synopsis: People with German accents, hiding in a bunker in the woods. Lots of talking. Occasionally, they peek out and these random Hollywood explosions start happening. A few slow motion shots of people dropping dead. I rented this movie expecting a good depiction of some World War II battles. I wanted to see strategy...I wanted to see different battle theatres...instead, I got hundreds of shots of a few guys in the same location with occasional explosions. Boring. The only people I think that truly enjoy this movie either liked it when it first came out or like it just because Sam Peckinpah directed it. Truly forgettable. Simply a great war movie
This is one of the most realisitcally put together war movies ever made about World War II. It is very contraversial because it was done from the point of view of German soldiers, but only a fool would see this thing as pro German or pro nazi. The poltiics of the movie are simply, if anything, anti war and anti authoritarian. But what many reviewers miss, is the biting realism of this movie. The tanks (real T-34's) the fighting, the explosions, the confusion are all chillingly real, and frightening. You really get a sense of fear and danger from this which you just don't from Hollywood. But perhaps what is most interesting, is the personal crisis of individuals caught in harms way, which is so often the focus of Pekinhpahs better movies, from "Straw Dog's" to "Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia". This film focuses on the way different people react to emergencies, horror, and facing the ongoing threat of imminent death. If you have ever been in a life or death situation you will recognize the way some people think fast on their feet, some people rise to the occasions, some falter and hesitate, others drift into fantasy or insanity.... This is where it is most interesting psychologically. I would also add, that this is one of the few movies I have ever seen on WW II in which the Soviet Army is portrayed as the immenssely powerful war machine which it was in the second half of the war. Other than a general (small l) libertarian mood of distaste for all forms of authority, forget the politics. This movie has nothing to do with being for or aginst certain groups of people, or anything like that. It is simply a chillingly realistic war film, and as such, something many people more used to standard Hollywood fare just don't get. If you like war films but are disapointed by a lack of realism, if you liked Paths of Glory, Das Boot, When Trumpets Fade, (the original) Alls Quiet on the Western Front, Hamburger Hill, Apocolypse Now, The Longest Day, The Last Valley, and the Samurai -War films of Akira Kirosawa (such as Ron), to name a few, you will love this one. If you prefer bubblegum fantasy like "pearl harbor" and "U571" and the war films of John Wayne, or if you put some kind of political litmus test on all movies on who they can portray and who they can't, you may not... Peckinpah's View Of An Infantile But Deadly Game
Sam Peckinpah was never one to make violence, death, and war fun for people to watch, though a lot of people have seen his films that way; he wanted the audience to experience it and come away with hard-hitting truths. Such was the case with his 1977 World War II movie CROSS OF IRON, a terribly underappreciated war film that never got its proper due in the U.S., largely because of its point of view. Rather than look from World War II from the American or British point of view, as so many films before and after would do, Peckinpah, in filming this adaptation of Willi Heinrich's novel "The Iron Cross", instead focused on looking at the war from the POV of German foot soldiers. James Coburn is Sgt. Steiner, a soldier committed to the safety of his platoon as the Germans find themselves outmanned by the advancing Russian army, while Maximillian Schell is Stransky, his commandant and a much-despised man, for his ego is driving him to want to get the highest of all German war honors, the Iron Cross, while his autocratic behavior marks him as a coward. The very meat of this story forces Peckinpah, who had already let drugs and booze interfere too much with the work he was capable of, to be at his best, which he does quite well, helped out by Coburn and Schell, as well as solid supporting performances from James Mason, David Warner, and Austrian actress Senta Berger (who had played a love interest in Peckinpah's 1965 Civil War western MAJOR DUNDEE). There are flaws in this film, but they have very little to do with Peckinpah himself, though as mentioned before his drinking and drug usage were spinning out of control by the time of the film's making. The director had considerable budgetary constraints to work with, the product of dealing with a small-time producer (Wolf Hartwig) of porno films in Germany who had raised the money to make this film based on Peckinpah's name but never had the money altogether at any time during the production of the movie. With a crack crew that included production designer Ted Haworth, assistant director Newt Arnold, special effects man Sass Bedig, and cinematographer John Coquillon, however, CROSS OF IRON manages to avoid most of its budgetary pratfalls and emerges as a scathing look at the brutality of war. Seeing the war through the eyes of German foot soldiers may not have sat well with U.S. audiences, but Peckinpah's choice to do it this way was the right one because it gets to the truth of war instead of opting for John Wayne jingoism and faux-patriotism. The montage editing and the action scenes in CROSS OF IRON are Peckinpah at his best, and make this film comparable in quality and intensity to such great war films as PATHS OF GLORY, PLATOON, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, and FULL METAL JACKET. It is a hidden gem of its genre, and a clear example of why Peckinpah, as tough-assed a reprobate as Hollywood had ever seen, was a master of his craft.
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