Despite the odd casting, (James Coburn, James Mason and David Warner as German soldiers), "Cross of Iron" remains one of Sam Peckinpah's masterpieces, one of the greatest of war films and one of the most important and most undervalued American films of the seventies. Based on Willi Heinrich's novel it deals with one particular platoon of German soldiers fighting and losing on the Russian Front during World War Two and for the most part all anti-Nazi, fighting a war they don't believe they can win.
Peckinpah handles the battle scenes superbly but at the heart of the film is the battle of wills between Maximilian Schell's cowardly officer who will do anything to get the Iron Cross and Coburn's sergeant who hates the very uniform he wears and which places the film in the same ballpark as Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" and Aldrich's "Attack". Terrific performances, too, from Coburn, Schell and Mason. Now if last year's German remake of "All Quiet on the Western Front" were only a tenth as good as this...
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