Rating: 
Summary: One of the best WWII Movies
Review: This movie is, without a doubt, one of the best WWII movies. Told from the German point of view, it is very graphic and depicts "life" on the Eastern Front. James Coburn and Max Schell are great protaganists. The combat is very realistic.
Rating:
Summary: A Realistic Russian Front Epic, Far Better than Stalingrad
Review: Take it from someone who was an Army "grunt" for 12 years -- this movie was filmed as realistic as one could get without being on the battlefield, and during my time in service, Cross of Iron was one of the favorites of infantrymen and WWII buffs everywhere. Many wellknown (at least in Europe) German actors were featured in this film. It is one of the few movies I've seen that accurately depicts the spite and tension that exists between officers (seeking career advancement at the expense of their men) and enlisted men (just trying to survive). Having lived in Germany and conversed on many occasions with Wehrmacht veterans who were on the Russian front, I found Cross of Iron to be very close in detail to the conditions and experiences they described. A previous writer describes the movie's mood as depressing (not as much as Das Boot or Stanlingrad, IMHO!); yet it reflects exactly the realization of fighting for a lost cause that many German soldiers experienced. And hell, war IS depressing! Aside from the farmhouse scenes involving a female Soviet unit, this movie is as real as any German depiction of fighting on the Russian front that I have ever read, and there are many books in this genre. If you want to know what it was really like to fight in the elements in East Europe in WWII, in the mud, sweat, and shrapnel, and to understand what comaraderie is about (without all the surrealism and eccentricities of "Stalingrad") then this under-appreciated classic is the one to see! The artillery and trench warfare scenes are incredible, some of the best I've ever seen... Sam Peckinpah was able to effectively show all the sharp contradictions of war: courage and cowardice, sensitivity and crudeness, mercy and cruelty, and in the end, irony and justice.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth seeing.
Review: The Cross of Iron is a movie that is worth seeing for any interested in the German side of WWII. Unlike most war movies that are mostly action (and unrealistic at that), this movie depicts the politics, bordom, and horror of combat. Even more horrifying is the fact that those who are fighting know that they have already lost. This is a movie that anyone who has ever been in a no win situation will appreciate.
Rating: 
Summary: Breaking New Ground
Review: Although CROSS OF IRON approaches neither the level of other WWII films (DAS BOOT, STALINGRAD, THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE) nor the overall excellence of other Peckinpah works (RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, THE WILD BUNCH), it remains a valuable film for one main reason: it is one of the few films to deal with the WWII German-Russian front. CROSS OF IRON convincingly portrays the violence and savagery that drove German and Russian soldiers in that theater of the war. For that alone, the film is worth viewing. After experiencing CROSS OF IRON, one can only feel that the German soldiers in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and THE BIG RED ONE had it easy.
Rating: 
Summary: A Strange Film to say the Least.
Review: This movie is odd. From the opening childer's song to the executions at the end I was confused by this film. There is a large homosexual undertone that really doesn't belong along with some pyschotic scenes that remind of a bad trip. Steiner and his men are forced to fight a battle that Steiner knows Germany is losing with a Major who needs an Iron Cross to make his life complete and a General who is living in the past and waves of Russian troops comming his way. This movie was ok for 1977, but if you really want to see a German squad in Russia watch Stalingrad. (This movie only gets a 2 because its got Germans in it).
Rating:
Summary: Sam Peckinpah's German Warflick!
Review: Director Sam Peckinpah who brought to the screen the "Wild Bunch" leaves the audience hanging at the end of the film. Jame Coburn is great as Sgt. Steiner. If the Studio gave Sam more money to complete the film the way he wanted it done, this flick would have been a masterpiece! Great action scenes!
Rating:
Summary: WWII from a the view of a German Squad.
Review: I've been looking forward to buying this video since seeing it 20 years ago. As a war movie it compares highly with Saving Pvt Ryan in its depiction of combat at the squad level. However, it is unique in that it is follows a German squad through battle on the Russian front. Gripping, violent, suspenseful and entertaining. A sure hit for military buffs. END
Rating:
Summary: Peckinpah's last triumph
Review: Sam Peckinpah, in his 1977 effort "Cross of Iron", darred to look at the war throught German eyes. Thus becoming one of the handful of directors with the audacity to view the German soldiers as a humans, and not as faceless barbarians. Based upon a novel by Willi Heinrich, Cross of Iron is the tale of Steiner, and his troops fight for survival on the Taman peninsula in 1943. Thought it is not near the final stages of the war as many believe, the film depicts the turning of the tables in favor of the Soviets; after the losses at Stalingrad and Kursk. This gritty, unflinching and realistic portrail of combat on the eastern front, seems more stunning if you keep in mind the budget restraints. Authentic in almost every aspect, all the vehicles, weaponry and uniforms all flawless. The Wehrmacht soldiers are dirty and unreasted as they would be during uncessant battle, unlike many a war film which have the soldiers clean and proper. Also during filming, Soviet T-34 tanks acquired from the Czech Republic, were administered during a skirmish. At the time Peckinpah was addicted to coccain and was an alcoholic, yet through all the self-inflicted harm of his reckless life style, his directing capability remained unscathed. The Sam we know from the "Wild Bunch" and "Straw Dogs" is still here, with the slow-motion seens of carnage and his trademark "zooms". But aside from his usual hallmarks, he also give use a personal view of combat. Sam doesn't want to be a spectator, he wants to be a participant, and in doing so he lets us experience the noise, confusion and horror of the Russan front. The film though however great, is not without flaws. First off the casting is questionable, James Mason, David Warner and James Coburn seem somewhat out of place. Being either American of British they could have made a more conscious effort to sustain a fluent german accent. There also is some scenes, a lack of light, which can cause some confusion. Still Sam Peckinpah has left us with an enduring and powerful statement about war, honor, survival and friendship in a world gone mad.
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: No illusions about what war is really supposed to be about
Review: It is quite hard to fault this offering from director Sam Peckinpah even if some might argue that it was very much a case of "miscasting" when it came to two distinguished English actors playing a colonel and his arm-in-a-sling, chain-smoking, disillusioned adjutant, and an American actor playing the hard-bitten German army non-commissioned officer. Nevertheless, one should be able to credit James Coburn's very respectable performance as Sergeant Rolf Steiner, the man upon whose shoulders lies the burden of command of a reconnaissance platoon on the Eastern Front in 1943.
At this stage of the Second World War, Germany is retreating from the East and the images of war, with blood gushing from wounded and dying soldiers (using the slow-motion technique for which Peckinpah was famed) and debris from shell-hits flying in all directions, are quite powerful. The violent aspects of some of his films were something which Peckinpah received a lot of criticism for, yet war was war, and he was not going to sugarcoat it for any audience. This was, after all, a brutal, total war where more than 20 million citizens of the then USSR, most of them civilians, were killed by the Germans, something that Steiner was only too well aware of when he remarked that "nobody will ever forgive or forget Germany for this".
Steiner's nemesis is his new CO, an aristocratic Prussian, Captain Stransky (Maximilian Schell). Considering that all the German soldiers were scruffy, dirty, stinking, and so on, given their conditions, I was surprised that Stransky did not play the stereotypical spit-and-polish officer by ordering his men to clean themselves up, polish their boots, report for parade every morning at six, and so on. Perhaps, though, that is a comic book stereotype, and it was well that it was avoided.
Nevertheless, Stransky does not conceal his reason for volunteering for the front instead of staying in occupied France. He allegedly has family honor to maintain, something that Steiner could not give a hang for, especially when it seems that he is more than ready to take credit for leading a counter-attack when the real man who led it was killed. Stransky's sycophantic adjutant, Second Lieutenant Triebig (Roger Fritz), had attested to his blatent lies, but Colonel Brandt (James Mason) and his adjutant, Captain Kiesel (David Warner), doubted the veracity of the Prussian and called for both Triebig and Steiner to confirm or deny the report made by him.
Steiner uses this occasion to make his impassioned, albeit low-voiced condemnation of the war, the army and the Nazi regime, and leaves Brandt, who admires the veteran soldier greatly, in a quandary; unless Steiner refutes what Stransky said in his report, the Prussian would be awarded his coveted Iron Cross, yet the sergeant is way past caring.
One particularly memorable scene was the bizarre one at the hospital, where Steiner either witnesses or else imagines he is witnessing a gathering of people, including a high ranking German army general, who looks as if he has never even been to the front in his life. The moment, where a fellow wounded comrade shows the general what remains of his arms as stumps and then one of his legs as his equivalent of a "handshake", is a powerful reminder not just of what physical damage close-quarter combat can inflict on a soldier, but also of what psychological damage it can do. Steiner's rage at seeing rich food and spotlessly clean dinner plates boils over and he predictably lets everybody know what he thinks about it all.
Peckinpah's anti-war film, based on a novel by Willi Heinrich, shows how graphically the fighting between the Germans and the Soviets is conducted. Certainly, the use of old T-34 tanks adds to the authenticity of the hardware used - even Steiner's preferred weapon of choice was a Russian sub-machine gun, characterized by the distinctive round magazine. The director was also unafraid of showing the macabre and the gruesome, as witnessed by the scenes involving Steiner's platoon and the Russian army women, where two of the Germans, including a very young private recently arrived at the front, meet somewhat grislier than expected ends.
Ultimately, bullets, mortar shells, aerial bombs and tank shells rain down on the Germans and are no respecter of rank, status, orders or desires for decorations, as Stransky finds out, much to Steiner's amusement as he finds out that the Prussian is hopeless when it comes to his having a weapon in his hands. "I'll show you where the Iron Crosses grow," says Steiner shortly before the end, although, given the images that were shown during the closing credits, one would have thought that it would have been appropriate to have shown row upon row of graves of German soldiers with their helmets planted on top of crosses. The action would have gone from cross of iron to cross of wood, in other words, a stark contrast from the pre-war images of idealistic Hitler Youth members bearing Nazi flags and crossing mountains, along with a children's song on the soundtrack, during the opening credits.
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