Stalingrad

Admire the ambition, but this version of Bondarchuk fails to back up its camera work, special effects and editing with enough of substance to anchor the spectator.

Cant say i was convinced with the plot or the dialogs, neither my feelings were really touched. Thomas Kretschmann actually is the only one who's character seems to be convincing. Great actor who saved this film...

Descent piece of work, but not anything i would choose to watch one more time. Would have expected Fedor Bondarchuk to come up with something much more substantial, taking into consideration the topic...

In the present days, a Russian rescue team is saving lives in Japan after a tsunami. They find survivors and their leader calm a youngster down telling the story of his five fathers.

In 1942, a group of Russian soldiers hold a strategic building in Stalingrad against the German troops to protect the Volga River for the crossing of their comrades. They meet the seventeen year-old teenager Katya (Mariya Smolnikova) and she becomes the pride and joy of the band. Meanshile, the German Captain Koln (Tomas Krechmann) falls in love with the Russian Masha (Yanina Studilina), who resembles his deceased wife. But love in time of war may be tragic.

The impressive German war movie "Stalingrad" (1993) is one of the best of the genre ever, depicting the bloody Battle of Stalingrad. The Russian "Stalingrad" (2013) is not a remake of the German movie but a melodramatic and corny love story in the environment of the devastated city and heroic attitudes of the Russian soldiers. The CGI, scenarios and battle scenes are top-notch but part of the dialogs may be lost in translation since there are long sentences in Russian that are resumed in one sentence in the subtitle. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Stalingrado" ("Stalingrad")

Actually, this film MUST not have its name. There is nothing about Stalingrad battle... Yes, cute pictures how burned Soviet soldiers attacking German positions and slow-motion hand-to-hand battles looks nice, but that is nothing related to real history of this battle.

In terms of scale the film does not give the answer at least about one local engagement in Stalingrad in WW2, especially if take into account that there were a lot of such events. Heroes behaves really strange and illogical sometimes. Very messy scene where commander made hysteric about killed German soldier who came for water. "Even animals do not devour each other at the watering!" he says. What? Hey, director, haven't you seen "Animal planet"?..

So the good name for this film is "Saving girl Katya", but not "Stalingrad". It's just a director's fantasies about THE WAR, and how does he see it, but there is nothing related to Stalingrad battle at all. Now we can easily change decorations and make film with same mental content named "Berlin" or "Kiev", because we could simply imagine the same "war story" anywhere. So, why Stalingrad?..

Unfortunately, this movie turned out to be what I expected from a Russian produced film about the Great Patriotic War. The film depicts the heroic soldiers and sailors of the Soviet Union fighting to the death the barbaric fascist invaders. The Soviet defenders are almost all saintly; one is even nicknamed Angel. The Germans are all beastly underlined by the atrocities they commit on screen against the surprisingly large number of Russian civilians living in the middle of the battlefield. This movie compares unfavorably with the German produced movie Stalingrad and Enemy at the Gates because of its simplicity. The only scenes that I found interesting showed the Germans preparing to attack and those which depicted the Soviets crossing the Volga. I have great difficulty recommending this movie especially considering alternatives.

WWII gets the 300 treatment as our fantastic heroes defeat the nasty Germans, sometimes single handedly killing a dozen men each in slow motion blood spraying hand to hand combat. It's that realistic, especially as Russians apparently keep fighting even when completely consumed by flames.

The defenders of Stalingrad were courageous real people but this belittles them as two dimensional action heroes.

A lot of effort and budget was put into making this but it was ill spent, there is no reflection, no feeling, no humanity, it is hollow. If you want to see a film about Stalingrad look up the earlier German film.