DVD Talk Forum - Stalingrad-review please...

I just watched this about two weeks ago. Overall, I would say it rates about an average. If you enjoy World War II films, you might enjoy this, but I don't think it will appeal to a larger audience.

DVD Quality:

The picture is full frame. This is not a big problem, because it was filmed that way and you aren't losing the picture. The sound quality was adequate. It certainly wasn't bad, but it was nothing special. The language is in German, with English dubbing and/or English subtitles. I watched it with the English dubbing which was surprisingly good. You really had to be looking closely to tell it was dubbed. Not at all like those 1960's Kung Fu movies. The transfer was excellent in all respects. I saw no artifacts, no pixelization, the source film must have been in good shape too (which it should be since the film is only a few years old).

Film Quality:

The story follows the path of a squad/small platoon of German soldiers sent to Stalingrad. It began quite well, with the standard war movie set up (soldiers on leave, relaxing etc.), then moved to the battle portion. The initial sequences were well done, but I felt they were very short. Stalingrad saw a lot of urban fighting of a VERY vicious nature. The film only focused on this aspect for a short time. It then moved on to winter scenes and the ultimate conclusion.

I felt that the film suffered from a fragmented story line. As I said above, the fighting in Stalingrad took only a small portion of the film. The film really lost steam about half way through when the main characters run into some trouble with the German brass. The final 1/3 of the film was a real collapse on the part of the filmmakers. We switch from soldiers fighting a brutal batttle to soldiers basically waiting to die with some confused desertion sequences thrown in. The real battle of Stalingrad ultimately saw a lot of starvation and desperation in winter before the German Sixth Army surrendered. Unfortunately, the film utterly failed to deliver any real emotional impact when showing this. We don't see soldiers dying from a desperate battle and siege, we see hedonists doing nothing until they die. The film was far too long for the amount of material covered. They could have told this story in about 2/3 of the time, and the final 1/3 should have been cut completely, or better yet, totally revised to have a better theme.

When the film was over, all I could really think was "this had a lot of potential, but didn't really deliver". Overall, I would say this is about a 5 on a 1 to 10 scale. Rent it before buying. And only rent it if you have an interest in war films.