User Reviews

In 1943, the German front is retreating from the Taman' Peninsula on the Black Sea. Enter Captain Stransky, an ambitious Prussian aristocratic officer, who aims to win himself the Iron Cross. However, his plans are stymied by Corporal Steiner, an implacable but battle-weary platoon leader, who sees no glory in medals. Meanwhile, the Russians are advancing ever closer ...

There are very few Second World War films featuring Germans as the protagonists, and the ones that do are often amongst the best. This is a great, bloody, primal scream of a war film; bitter, cynical, heart-breaking, vicious and completely devoid of sentiment. There is no honour, no morality, only drudgery, fear and loathing. The soldiers' only loyalties are to each other and to staying alive, not to their leaders or their country, and the commissioned officers care only for their own rank and power. Steiner, a brilliant and decorated leader, has an astounding speech where he reveals his unrepenting hatred for all officers and for the wehrmacht - it is an incredible moment of resentment against anyone who would pursue a military agenda or attempt to glorify warfare. The cast are excellent, particularly Warner as the philosophical Captain Kiesel and Loewitsch as Kruger, the platoon second-in-command. The action is brilliantly photographed by John Coquillon (the explosion-filled battle scenes were shot in Yugoslavia), and features Peckinpah's trademark brilliant editing, all jump-cut shots from different times and scenes interspersed with amazingly unsettling effect. Written by Walter Kelley, James Hamilton and Julius Epstein (the screenwriter of Casablanca), from the book Das Fleisch Bereitwillig by Willi Heinrich, this Anglo-German coproduction by a truly great maverick director is one of the most powerful war films ever made.

It is 1943, and the German Wehrmacht is being overrun by a Russian counterattack. Oblivious to his army's declining fortunes, aristocratic Captain Stransky (Maximillian Schell) turns up to take command of a company of bedraggled troops. Stransky makes clear his primary goal is to win the Iron Cross, seeing the medal as merely an appropriate decoration for his social status, rather than something to be won for heroism. Stransky instantly clashes with Sergeant Rolf Steiner (James Coburn), an embittered non-commissioned officer who's seen more than his fair share of combat, and has some archaic notions of honor, loyalty and heroism. When Steiner refuses to endorse Stransky's bid for an Iron Cross, Stransky takes revenge by leaving Steiner's platoon behind - forcing Steiner and his men to undertake a hellish forced march through enemy lines, before setting up the final showdown between Steiner and Stransky - in the midst of a Russian offensive.

"Cross of Iron" is Sam Peckinpah's only war film, and is something of a disappointment. As with "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", it's an interesting movie, but one can't help but think a more sober, reasonable early-career Peckinpah - the one that produced "Ride the High Country" and "The Wild Bunch" - would have made a masterpiece out of it. As it stands, "Cross of Iron" is still interesting and fairly entertaining, but far from a masterpiece, with many serious flaws.

The biggest problem with "Cross of Iron" is its lack of subtlety. The message is pretty clear: officers are evil and reprehensible cowards, letting enlisted men to die like dogs while capitalizing off of their sacrifice. This is a valid point, albeit an unoriginal one, but the message is as subtle as a neon sign. Stransky is a caricature evil officer; he introduces himself by outright stating his only goal is to win an Iron Cross, not even masking it as a joke. He baits two officers into admitting their homosexuality and then uses this information as blackmail. During his first battle, he cowers and hides in a bunker, then brazenly demands a commendation for heroism. Later, he leaves Steiner's platoon behind and, even later, orders his men to machine-gun Steiner's platoon. Although he has glimmers of humanity (his one-on-one with Steiner about the importance of the Cross to him), Stransky never rises above the level of caricature. James Mason's Colonel Brandt and David Warner's Kessel are presented more sympathetically, but in the end they're completely impotent and ineffectual (Kessel suffers from dysentery to emphasize the point), only emphasizing the message.

In any case, Steiner hates them all, as he makes clear in a speech to Brandt and Kessel. This serves as a self-defeating character trait, as Steiner is unwilling to help Brandt punish Stransky for cowardice. One might accept Steiner's viewpoint as valid, but one would also hasten to add that it's counterproductive. If he hates officers so much, why not go after the really nasty ones? Steiner is just a bitter, angry, cynical man, not without reason, but it's clear (as with many Peckinpah characters) that he thrives on combat, making his stance somewhat ambiguous and even self-contradictory. That may be the point, but it doesn't really endear us to Steiner.

That all might be excusable (Peckinpah, after all, never was much for subtlety), except that the entire film has an inescapably anemic feel. Major scenes lack the power they should; whether it was Peckinpah's own state of mind, or the film's low budget, the movie pretty much lacks any real force or drive. The major confrontations between characters seem forced; the battle scenes, with one major exception, lack the visceral power that one would expect of a Peckinpah film. The movie certainly has its share of effective moments: the first battle is a doozy, impressive considering the budgetary restraints, Stransky's baiting the two officers, the scenes of German soldiers struggling to remain sane between battles, Steiner's hallucinatory hospital stay - but they're counter-balanced by the weak, cliché and trite sequences that riddle the film. The confrontation between Steiner's platoon and a group of Russian women soldiers is a great idea that fizzles out almost before it begins. The scene where Steiner spares a Russian POW, only to see him machine-gunned by his own men, is rather trite. The final showdown between Steiner and Stransky is well-done but the conclusion is just baffling. The overuse of photo and video montage over the opening and closing credits provides another clunky note. (One might also point out that the use of Wermacht soldiers as protagonists is a novel idea that ultimately comes to very little.)

The acting is pretty good, with James Coburn giving arguably his career-best performance as the embittered Steiner (in spite of a dodgy attempt at an accent) - yet another "Peckinpah professional" trapped in an inescapable circle of personal hell. Maximillian Schell gives an intense performance, managing to overcome the cartoon constraints of his role. James Mason and David Warner comport themselves admirably, but they can't overcome their weak roles. Senta Berger (previously of Peckinpah's "Major Dundee") has a brief but effective role. There are many talented German actors filling out the supporting cast - Klaus Lowich, Roger Fritz, Dieter Schidor, Burkhard Driest - who give memorable characterizations.

Cross of Iron is a very mixed bag. It's entertaining enough, but really it lacks much in the way of depth or originality. Perhaps if Peckinpah had laid off the coke while shooting - or, better yet, been given a reasonable budget to work with - we could have a very good film on our hands. Instead, we have an interesting film that exists mostly as a "what-might-have-been".

6/10

** Possible minor spoilers **

"The finest anti-war film ever made," according to Orson Welles, who knew a little bit about movies himself, and I for one won't disagree. Cross of Iron has its flaws - the incongruity of some of the casting and accents, several sloppily-directed scenes, occasional bouts of pretentiousness - but nevertheless it is a masterpiece.

Sam Peckinpah was heavily in the grip of terminal alcoholism when he made this film, and it shows. The sure touch and tight control of script, action and editing he showed in The Wild Bunch (easily his best film, one of the ten best films ever in fact; don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise) are not consistent here, but individual sequences, such as the initial attack on the machine gun bunker, are vintage Sam.

What makes this film great is the savagery of its bleak, existential anti-war sentiments. By showing the battle at the Russian front from the perspective of the "enemy", ie Steiner's German platoon, Cross of Iron avoids patriotic cliché and forces us to confront deep-seated prejudices. By the time they are slaughtered at the climax, we do genuinely care about Steiner's men, to the extent that we exult in Steiner's clinical execution of the agent of their murders. The real punch comes right at the very end of the film, during the last part of the end credits: a succession of slides depicting wartime atrocities, including the hanging of children in concentration camps, is projected onto the screen, the sound of the projector mimicking that of a gun being loaded. Overlaid on this is the sound of ebbing manic laughter - Steiner's? - the cruel commentary of a man worn down by constant immersion in man's cruelty to his fellows.

Somebody here criticises this film because the battle scenes are "confusing" and "hard to follow". Well for goodness sake, isn't that what war is like? Confusing, chaotic, frightening, Peckinpah's elliptical battle scenes, with their distorted sound, dull colours and surreal, disorientating photography, plunge us into the centre of hell in a way Spielberg's technically proficient but emotionally vacuous Saving Private Ryan never does. At the end of the film, watch how Peckinpah shoots the doomed platoon members in telephoto close-up, an effect which serves to flatten their images against the screen, dislocating them from their environment.

Not the greatest of Peckinpah, but a great film. And even average Peckinpah is better than the best that modern Hollywood usually offers.

Scanning through some of the (very few) harsh reviews of this film, it's hard to believe that some people who profess to enjoying intelligent, groundbreaking cinema didn't actually like it. My advice: Go rent out a Michael Bay / Bruckheimer film....something like Pearl Harbor. That will be more to your tastes I imagine.

Cross of Iron is the kind of film that scars you mentally. I remember seeing it at a young age on British television in the early 80's, and being totally blown away by it. There are so many visually memorable things about it that stay in your head long after viewing it.....the hypnotic, kinetic camera work, the astonishing, stream-of-consciousness editing style, the grimy, blood, mud & s**t-smeared battlefields that feel almost like the great war rather than WW2.

Of course, great visuals are nothing when they are not married to a great story. The tale is deceptively simple - a recon unit of the Werhmacht is desperately fighting for survival and escape, against the seemingly endless waves of vengeful Russian forces in the immediate aftermath of Stalingrad. The unit is headed by Steiner (James Coburn, never better), a dead-eyed, worn-out Corporal who cares nothing for the Third Reich, the Furher and the army officers, only for his platoon of unwashed, burnt out and cynical troops. His men idolise him for his fearlessness and decisiveness in combat, and as a group they make a deadly and efficient fighting force. The unit is thrown into chaos by the arrival of Captain Stransky (a wonderfully slimy Maximillian Schell), a vain aristocratic officer who is deep down a coward, but is driven forward by his desire to gain an Iron Cross - something which sets him in immediate conflict with Stiener and his unit. Steiner ridicules Stransky's insane desire for a medal as he already has several - "it's just a piece of worthless metal". Stransky however will stop at nothing, even turning on his own forces, to gain an Iron Cross. Thus a deadly circle of sacrifice, mistrust, betrayal, judgement and redemption is set in motion.

The fact that the main protagonists are German and the "villans" (as such) are Russians is the first of many surprises in the film that defy Hollywood convention. It is risk-taking like this that very rarely happens in modern cinema.

As for the performances.....James Coburn's face expresses more in the flicker of an eyebrow and an enigmatic half-smile/half-frown than the likes of Hanks, Affleck, Cage etc could summon over an entire film. The supporting cast are also excellent. Schell is great as the cowardly Captain Stransky. David Warner and James Mason also excel in small but well observed and minutely detailed roles. Steiner's unit is a group of extraordinary actors. Many look as though they have been plucked from a spaghetti western - battered features, grimy unshaved faces, leering faces. Throughout the film there is a real sense of the actors functioning as a "combat unit" - Peckinpah obviously enjoyed being a part of the group and encouraged them to bounce off each other. This is especially evident in the bunker scenes when they are shown not as faceless killing machines but as human soldiers - joking, farting, drinking, at ease. This contrasts sharply when they are on the battlefield, and they become almost animalistic in their struggle to survive.

The battle scenes are truly amazing - the now trademark Peckinpah cross-cutting, slow-motion and multiple points-of-view are evident throughout Watching them now, you can see where the likes of John Woo, James Cameron and definitely Oliver Stone picked up many motifs and ideas.

If you have any serious love for cinema, are jaded by the standard jingoistic bulls**t that Hollywood churns out, and want to discover a film that will stay with you for a long time after you have viewed it, then I recommend that you make the effort to seek this out. If any film deserved the special edition re-issue treatment, this is it.

Stransky: "All right......I accept. I'll show you how a Prussian Officer can fight!!" Steiner: "And I'll show you....where the iron crosses grow!"

Sam Pekinpaugh has given us a big war-time movie situated on the Russian front, starring James Coburn as the savvy and taciturn Sgt. Steiner and Maximilian Schell as the newly arrived, dapper, Junker aristo, eager for the Iron Cross, the decoration given only for heroism in battle. It has Pekinpaugh's signature on it -- an abundance of painful deaths, more explosions than have ever before been committed to celluloid, and all in slow motion. The story is such that, if it weren't for some cogent lines, it could have been directed by Sam Fuller.

I'll give one example of what I thought was a good line. At the end, both Coburn and Schell stand face to face, armed, and about to be overwhelmed and killed by the onrushing Russians. It's only a brief pause, but Schell admits his status still requires the winning of the Iron Cross. "You come with me," says Coburn, "and I'll show you where the crosses of iron are." It's neat because by a simple transposition of words within the phrase, Coburn has turned a medal (the Iron Cross) into a grave marker (crosses of iron).

It has its weaknesses. It's really too long and too loose-limbed for what it has to say. As Steiner, Coburn is a monument to military perfection, while Schell is a stereotypical cowardly and spiteful traitor. Coburn does well enough by the role of the humanitarian but dedicated sergeant.

Schell is a marvelous actor but he has only one scene in which he's able to put his chops on display -- when he tricks a subordinate into admitting that he prefers the company of men to women. "He said YES! He said YES!" Schell is in a transport of delight at having finagled his subordinate into a possible admission of homosexuality which, as far as we can tell, isn't true. The effect, though, is to make the subordinate a compliant slave.

It's not a bad film in any way but it lacks poetry of any kind. Pekinpah by this time in his career was describing himself as "a functioning alcoholic." He's lucky he got it out at all.