Stalingrad

All in all, not worth the $45.00 asking price. The only reason why this DVD is priced that way is because war buffs (like me and you) would actually shell out this amount for this substandard quality product.

I would suggest a trip to your local big box electronics store to buy a cheapo DVD player (I spent $60 CND) that will play PAL and other region encoded DVD's. Then go to Amazon.UK and but this DVD for 5 pounds sterling (it will cost about $15 CND with shipping) At the same time you can buy Waterloo (not released in North America) and a better (but not much cheaper)version of Cross of Iron (1977). As well you can also order the excellent "Battlefield" series.

Made by the same producers who gave us the seminal "Das Boot" I found it not in that league. The film is overlong, sterotypical, and spends too much time cramming postwar German conscience pangs down the viewer's throat. Moreover, the last hour or so reminds me of those interminable scenes from "Born on the Fourth of July" that seem more interested in punishing the audience than advancing the story. The battle for, and siege of, Stalingrad, was no doubt an experience of horror and misery beyond the power of words or images to describe it, but what I was hoping for here was a German version of "Saving Private Ryan" -- high on combat and confusion, short on moralizing. Unfortunately, all postwar German cinema is filtered through the same revisionist political opinions; this explains why all German war movies inevitably leave you with the feeling like you've been punched in the stomach or clubbed over the head. After about an hour I was hoisting my own flag of surrender; but the pummeling continued.

The scene at the airfield, for example, when the wounded men are trying desperately to get out on the last transports, is very hard to watch. From what I've read, however, it seems that discipline in the Stalingrad pocket was maintained until the bitter end, and the airfield scene may more resemble how the producers of the film wanted history to unfold rather than the actual way it did. In fact, the 90,000 men who lived to surrender (all but 5,000 of whom died in captivity) did so only when they were completely out of fuel, medicine, and ammunition, and had no other means to resist; but the producers, of course, permit to trace of pride in military accomplishment to enter into their film.

Most American movies and television portray the Germans in World War II as heel-clicking cartoon idiots ("I know nutink! Nutink!"). Most German war movies portray the Germans as either villainous martinet Nazis, or cynical disbelievers who carry arms only for Germany and not for Hitler or the Party. In fact, the record shows that the Germans overwhelmingly trusted Hitler and were deeply inspired by his ideology. It is this fact, and not what was done in the name of National Socialism, that seems to sit very hard in the modern German stomach.