Rating: 
Summary: Great movie, atrocious Region 1 DVD release!
Review: Cross Of Iron is one war film that will take repeat viewings to truly absorb all the material. With that said, I won't elaborate on the film's strong points since they've already been mentioned by many before. And this DVD release from Hen's Tooth is not the one to view this film from. It is a shortened edited version and the transfer is Full-Frame, it doesn't even appear to be Pan & Scan...simply a dead shot down the middle of the film. The quality of this Hen's Tooth release is absolutely atrocious for the DVD format. It appears as though it's almost a VHS transfer, or a heavily worn film transfer at best. There are numerous scratches and dust artifacts, and the color saturation is very faded in many scenes. The sound on the DVD is equally terrible during the entire movie, it's very hard to understand much of the dialogue at times.I've purchased bargain DVD's for $3 before that are 100% better in quality than this! Just by the sheer fact that the film is edited would have Peckinpah rolling in his grave. Hen's Tooth knows and have admitted that the transfer is horrible, yet they still charge $30 retail nearly 4 years after their DVD release?!?? There is no way that this disc is worth that much money. I would gladly pay the price if it was a Criterion edition, but not this poor edition. If you have the technical capability I recommend ordering either the UK DVD or Japanese DVD of Cross Of Iron. It won't cost you much more (perhaps less) than this unworthy Region 1 DVD release. The imports both present the film in it's original anamorphic widescreen format, with vastly superior picture and sound. If you don't have the technical capability, then buy a VHS edition of Cross Of Iron. 5 stars for the film itself, 0 stars for the Hen's Tooth DVD...hence my 4 star rating.
Rating: 
Summary: TO LIVE AND DIE IN RUSSIA
Review: Sam Peckinpah's CROSS OF IRON is a masterpiece, in my opinion the last great movie of this american director. Set in 1943, during the retreat of Russia, the movie depicts the life of a german platoon led by James Coburn. Maximilian Schell is an aristocratic Prussian led by ambition into the russian hell ; he wants to obtain the cross of iron but hasn't the guts to deserve it. The camp is commanded by a disillusioned James Mason and an alcoholic David Warner. The movie will not change Sam Peckinpah's reputation of misogyny, Senta Berger plays an anecdotical part only and the other women (russian) involved don't respect at all the code of honor so praised by Sam Peckinpah. CROSS OF IRON is a movie of men, celebrating the friendship born in the battlefields without distinction of classes. The wild bunch of James Coburn's comrades forms a group of men ready to die for each other. The screenplay is very original and lets Sam Peckinpah develop his usual themes. The style of the movie is also remarkable. During the opening credits, Peckinpah, using a very smart editing, presents the usual black and white footage involving Hitler and the images we have already seen a million times in other movies, then mixing a documentary in color about Hitler and the beginning of CROSS OF IRON. The effect is guaranteed and gives to the action of the movie a kind of seal of authenticity. You will also admire how Sam Peckinpah, with only two or three tanks, a lot of dynamite and an admirable editing, can create in the audience the feeling that he had a US$ 60 millions budget to spend. OK ! I'm through. There is a lot to say about this movie but see by yourselves, it is really worth it. Ah yes ! Note that this review is about the DVD zone 2 you can buy now at AMAZON.FR in France, slightly different from the DVD you can buy here. Sound and images are perfect and it is a widescreen version while you will have only a full screen (beurk!) with the DVD zone 1. A DVD for your library.
Rating: 
Summary: Cross of Iron succumbs to Bottle of Booze
Review: Increasingly erratic Sam Peckinpah had a reputation for being drunk on the set during in the 70s. Cross of Iron is highly uneven; at times professional and thrilling, other times just dull and pointless.
What made the Wild Bunch so compelling was the tension among the tightknit group of men who determined their own values, decided on their own actions. Peckinpah was at home in the lawless Western setting. However, WWII was much bigger than cowboys and Indians in every way, yet Cross of Iron simply settles down to western formulas of gunslingers shootin' and tootin', in this case on the Eastern frontier.
Coburn is good but hardly convincing as a German. Other men are a hodgepodge of British, German, and Yugoslavian actors and no organic chemistry develops among them.
This was sold as an anti-war movie but the very notion of such by Peckinpah is absurd.
Rating:
Summary: A Cross of Iron for Peckinpah
Review: It takes guts for a film director to make a WWII film from the German perspective, but Peckinpah had plenty and pulled it off quite well. The film focuses on Sgt. Steiner (James Coburn) who is the paradox of the the ideal soldier; he hates the rigid hierarchy of military order but is the best fighting man on the field. He only cares about his men and not the ideology of the war. In addition to worrying about the evermore certain Russian counter offensive against the delapidated German defenses (after Stalingrad), Steiner is under the command of a glory hunting Prussian "junker" aristocrat(Maximillian Schell)who will stop at nothing to get his share of glory before the war wraps up. Although this is a typical blood and guts, man's world, do or die, Penckinpah movie (e.g. "The Wild Bunch", "Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia) it is clearly a strong antiwar movie. It doesn't follow the typical formula of including the stereotype NAZI paperman as the nemesis of the story but, instead, focuses on the formerly unemployed (After WWI before WWII) officer class and German aristocracy as being the bringers of the NAZI scurge. The movie is older and has limitations in film quality but it is very well directed. If you like action, this is a movie to watch. If you like this movie I would also recommend "Stalingrad" and "Das Boot."
Rating:
Summary: A very fine war epic
Review: I first saw this movie (albeit in TV-edited version) as a child and knew right away that this was one of the finest war films I had ever seen. As a WWII buff, I had read many books and seen many war films, and Cross of Iron (the movie) was one of the more satisfying (and horrifying!) accounts of the war. Sam Peckinpah's directing is superb in this film. Coburn's Sergeant Steiner, who is just trying to survive and keep alive the men who follow him, versus the incompetent Captain Stransky (Maximillian Schell) who is on the Eastern Front only because he wants to win the Iron Cross, Germany's military award for valor in combat - makes for a very tense atmosphere throughout the movie. The viewer ultimately sides with Coburn's character, and can't help but feel outrage when Stransky deliberately tries to hang Steiner's men out to dry as the order to retreat is given, and Stransky does not pass along the order to Steiner. The battle scenes were magnificent, the best I had seen until "Saving Private Ryan" came along. You got a glimpse of the sheer terror the German soldiers must have felt when facing one of the Russians' human wave charges. The T-34 tanks used by the Russians appear authentic, unlike the substitutes used in many war films (see: Battle of the Bulge). This film is a must-see for anyone interested in WW2. It is unfortunate that so few films were made about the Russian Front. The Soviet Union did more to bring down the Nazi regime than the rest of the Allies combined. 90 percent of all battle casualties suffered by the Germans in the war happened on the Russian Front. The part of the movie that really grabbed me, however, was the beginning. While German children sing a song to the tune of "Lightly Row, Sweetly Row", images are shown of battle, death and the Holocaust - a wrenching juxtaposition of childhood innocence and the horrifying extents of man's inhumanity to man.
Rating:
Summary: Runs circles around Saving Private Ryan. Great antiwar film.
Review: I would argue that this is the best war movie around, followed closely by Peter Weir's Gallipoli.
Peckinpah is such a brilliant director, and so much more subtle than is immediately obvious.
By chosing Germans and Russians as protagonists, classical bad guys, the viewer does not really root for any side. He also chooses Crimea 1943 as the setting. Therefore we enter the film with very few preconceptions.
To add gravity to his message he does not use typical war music in his score; he mixes it with children's rhymes!
The soldiers on both sides are just soldiers, not particularly bad, not particularly good. They are rather portrayed as beeing trapped in a game played by the people behind the front. Most just try to survive, the only exception is the German front line commander who still clings to the, more decent, values of a bygone era.
Even the "bad guy" is not really a typical film "bad guy". He is weak and egotistic, he does not want to be at the front, he does not want this war. In the end sergeant Steiner ackowledges that
and gives him a chance to redeem himself ('Take this submachine-gun and win your iron cross like a man.').
Where Peckinpah's other films are hyperrealistic this one has a more dreamlike (nightmarish!) character. The Russian tanks have a quality of angels of vengeance, and the devastation after the battles are more reminiscent of Brueghel's visions of hell than of the "great day out for the lads" type vision we have from the usual Hollywood fare.
This is great action, but it has a very strong anti-war message. I think that people who only want to see a war movie will feel oddly disturbed after watching it. I think that is the reason for some negative reviews.
Rating:
Summary: A gruesome masterpiece -- intense, chilling
Review: Cross Of Iron is a masterpiece, one of the greatest anti-war, anti-authoritarian movies. It is one of director Sam Peckinpah's two finest works -- the other being The Wild Bunch. It deserves to be ranked in the same great war movie company as Apocalypse Now, Das Boot, Full Metal Jacket, Paths Of Glory, Saving Private Ryan, Seven Samurai, and Zulu. Its setting on the World War Two Eastern Front, its gruesomeness, and its risk-taking viewpoint on ugly combat from the German side, have tended to count against fair assessment of its considerable artistic achievements. Viewers wary of the morality of its German viewpoint and its explicitness might find that it is fundamentally about humanity in general as a victim of war. The film reflects on the humanity which may be found on all sides of conflict--including Russian humanity portrayed variously as relentless, innocent, brave, and feminine. Cross Of Iron opens with an intense, chilling montage of nursery rhyme, propaganda, combat newsreel and atrocity. By the end of the main title the montage subtly introduces the central characters, a German reconnaissance unit patrolling on the 1943 Russian front. This 1977 film set rarely matched standards of cinematic mayhem. Cross Of Iron explosions don't look merely like pretty fireballs -- they blast fragments, rocks and debris, leaving no doubt as to why blood gouts from stumps of limbs and shrapnel-shredded entrails... Amid the screams of wounded and dying, as dust subsides from a mortar barrage, an artillery piece shorn of its crew by a near hit swings across a pocked battlefield, its traversing wheel spinning under its own momentum. The carnage occurs in the choreographed slow motion which Peckinpah made his signature. James Coburn turns in one of his finest roles as Rolf Steiner, a highly decorated NCO who leads a German reconnaissance squad. Steiner fights less for his country than for his comrades. He has low opinions of class and rank distinctions. He is contemptuous both of Nazism and the aristocratic Prussian arrogance of his new superior officer, Captain Stransky, played with great style by Maximilian Schell. But there are hints of a dark side. Although Steiner is articulate and philosophical he has no answer when his love interest during an enforced break from battle, nurse Eva (Senta Berger), bitterly accuses him of being afraid of what he would be without the war. Among the many fine supporting performances, James Mason plays the war-weary Colonel Brandt. He sees the immorality and futility of German war aims, but his sense of honour and duty about the prevailing struggle makes ceasing to fight unthinkable. David Warner plays Brandt's out-of-place and out-of-time adjutant, Captain Kiesel, who represents to his colonel the hope that a more enlightened postwar Germany might arise from the ashes of inevitable defeat. War movie buffs irritated by the technical inaccuracies common in many examples of the genre will find some satisfaction in attention to authenticity of weaponry. A range of genuine WWII German and Russian small arms appears. The T 34/85 tanks are real, although the very picky might argue that this is at least six months premature, and that for the summer of '43 they should be T 34/76. Tactics at times deviate from the textbooks, but this is a drama, not a combat manual. Cross Of Iron is a five-star movie. The Hen's Tooth Video release is a two-star DVD, with sub-standard picture and sound. But it is worth owning while this great film of a great American director lacks the high quality collectors' edition Zone 1 DVD release it deserves.
Rating:
Summary: Cross of Iron
Review: Phenomenal film about the Russian front during WWII, presented from the German soldier perspective. A bit psychedelic at times, and this adds tremendously to the film. It really shows the insanity of war. Coburn plays a brilliant but disillusioned and degraded German oficer trying to save his troops from slaughter. He has earned the highly coveted Cross of Iron in past battles. Maximillian Schell plays a gung-ho German baron out to get the Cross of Iron, in any way he can (his dad earned it in WWI). Ideologies clash, true characters come out. Not your typical action film, although several war scenes (especially the slow-motions) are particularly powerfull. The begining of the film is absolutely brilliant, with film footage slowly blending in with live documentary footage. Note the contrast and irony that the children in the film present. James Mason is also very good. One of the few films that leaves a long-lasting impression on the viewer. Highly recomended.
Rating: 
Summary: Dirty Harry -- in feldgrau.
Review: "Cross of Iron" is a bad movie, made with preconcieved notions that do not fit history or reality. It makes the double mistake of A) cramming an American-style character (the lone wolf anti-hero) into a German uniform and B) tacking the director's well-known appetite for blood and graphic violence to a silly antiwar message. The movie follows the conflict between an embittered and defiant combat soldier named Stiener (played by James Coburn) and his new CO, a glory-seeking martinet named Stransky (played by Maximillian Schell). From the git-go, the movie follows every stale antiwar convention in the book: the bitter, insubordinate sergeant with an unspoken love for his men vs. the bloodthirsty killer-officer who wants to win a medal and doesn't care how many men die in the process. We've seen this in numerous American war movies, but it never quite works in German unfiorm. This wasn't a democracy; discipline in the Wehrmacht, particularly during the period in questoon, was severe and the slightest defeatism or insubordination were ruthlessly punished. The scene, for example, where Stiener berates and threatens a replacement soldier who is a Party member would probably never have happened. By late 1943 even officers were being degraded and sent off to suicide-squad 'punishment battalions' for minor transgressions or seditious statements. In reality, a soldier like Stiener would have most likely been shot, sent to a military prison or killed off digging up land mines in a penal outfit. The "lone wolf" mentality was simply not tolerated in the German army of 1943 (in Sajer's "Forgotten Soldier" a lieutenant is demoted to corporal and sent to the punishment squad for losing his field telephone when he swam the 900-yard Don River...what would have happened to Stiener for mouthing off to the colonel?). Additionally, we have more sterotypes: the loveable but doomed men of Stiener's squad, including the "I have dead meat written all over me" teenage boy, the evil Party member, the cowardly lieutenant, the well-meaning but ultimately hapless senior officers (played by James Mason and David Warner) and the obligatory scene where we find out that the Russians are people too. Really, the film is very similar in structure to a Dirty Harry movie: the lone-wolf anti-hero who scorns medals and glory, the pencil-pushing politician/boss, and nice-guy dead-meat partner, the ultimate hollow victory....blah blah blah. "Cross of Iron" is undermined by the love of cruelty that Sam Peckinpah was rightly infamous for. Graphic violence certainly has its place in a war movie, but as usual, Peckinpah felt the need to cram the viewer nose-first into buckets of human gore. This cheapens the antiwar theme of the movie; viciousness is fine so long as it is committed by the hero, but dastardly if if perpetrated by the villain. Morally, the massage of the movie is unclear: Stiener does not avenge the death of the innocent young soldier by the Russian POW women, but later brutally kills his own lieutenant for shooting others of his squad. Then, when confronting Stransky, who actually gave the order by blackmailing the cowardly lieutenant, he does not kill him but gives him a chance to "show that Prussians can fight." Okay, Stiener is probably insane by the end of the film, but none of this made sense to me. In Peckinpah's mind, the trembling lieutenant deserves to die more than Stransky, because he's afraid and "just wants to go home" wheras Stransky, while evil, deserves to live because he is not a hypocrite: he is willing to kill and allow others to be killed for his Iron Cross, but is also willing to fight himself. Maybe Peckinpah's theme was that war is unfair. So it all balances out, I guess? I guess not. "Cross of Iron" is a chronically over-rated war movie that bludgeons the viewer with Americanized themes, graphic violence, and a hypocritical antiwar message, brought to you by a director who idolized violent men. As entertainment it is a matter of taste, but as historical fiction, it is nonsense.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie needs a Director's Cut treatment PRONTO!!!!!!
Review: 5 stars for the film, ZERO for DVD! I find the movie (wich was cut to ribbons!!!by at least 35 minutes)to be simply amazing. Now for the Dvd, I can only add that is the worst DVD in my collection. Bad Audio, Awful tranfer, Horrenduos picture quality, FULL SCREEN (Yuckssss!!!!!) and it's the CUT to shreds version. Where's the director's cut? Why does the Wild Bunch gets the best treatment and not The Iron Cross. One of the most violent war epics before Full Metal Jacket and Private Ryan seems so weak and boring right now!!!...Do not get this edition because you will regret it and don't lsiten to does who have seen only the cut version of the film...someday they will also admire this masterpiece, when some wise distributor release the film in its correct way! Sam peckinpah is the Godfather of modern cinema violence!
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