How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 21 February 2014
This article is a review of STALINGRAD. |
“It’s impossible to wage war against you people,” Peter Kahn (Thomas Kretschmann)
STALINGRAD might just have created a new subgenre: 3D war porn. And by that, one means stunning combat presentation more appropriate for a vacuous action flick than for a serious Second World War film. Stylish eye-candy carnage sits uneasily alongside cheesy melodrama and merciless brutality, in this take on the siege of the Russian city. Video game analogies are not out of place. I’m looking at you, ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Battlefield’.
Utilising a similar narrative template to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, by having modern bookends surrounding the meat of the story, the pro/epilogue surprisingly offer up a kind of rapprochement. In the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, a Russian rescue force is in Japan. Visual flair is unable to be avoided by the filmmakers, even here, our initiation: A plane creeps into view amid a gorgeous dawn sun. Helicopters glide around the relief effort. A veteran team member has to keep a German victim trapped under a collapsed building calm until the necessary equipment arrives. He decides to tell her a story about how he had five fathers who died before his birth…
STALINGRAD might just have created a new subgenre: 3D war porn. And by that, one means stunning combat presentation more appropriate for a vacuous action flick than for a serious Second World War film. Stylish eye-candy carnage sits uneasily alongside cheesy melodrama and merciless brutality, in this take on the siege of the Russian city. Video game analogies are not out of place. I’m looking at you, ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Battlefield’.
Utilising a similar narrative template to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, by having modern bookends surrounding the meat of the story, the pro/epilogue surprisingly offer up a kind of rapprochement. In the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, a Russian rescue force is in Japan. Visual flair is unable to be avoided by the filmmakers, even here, our initiation: A plane creeps into view amid a gorgeous dawn sun. Helicopters glide around the relief effort. A veteran team member has to keep a German victim trapped under a collapsed building calm until the necessary equipment arrives. He decides to tell her a story about how he had five fathers who died before his birth…
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Cut to autumn 1942 and the beleaguered titular city. Russian reinforcements, attempting to cross the river Volga to alleviate Stalingrad, are strafed by the Luftwaffe. Those that make it to the other side are set on fire by the Nazis exploding fuel tanks. The Russian infantry continue fighting. Cartoon heroism abounds. A precarious equilibrium settles, after a battle that has a plane breaking apart around the protagonists. (The filmmakers don’t do things by halves.) A city square separates the opposing forces. Backing onto the river, a Russian contingent of said five fathers have bedded into a building, outnumbered. In the crumbling apartment block, the narrator’s mother is found in shock, having had unspeakable acts committed against her, and having buried all her friends and family. The weird motley of tones is oil and water, unable to gel here. Engagement comes from the mayhem, not from any kind of characterisation or credibility of human interaction. Mawkishness muddies observations/lessons.
Voice-over narration is bizarrely not only omnipresent but omniscient. How could he have known everything we are shown?
Choreographic/cinematographic panache suggests a bright future for director/director of photography. Hopefully next time they anchor their technical chutzpah to a decent script.