Sorry, this movie sucks

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Highly Overrated But Still Good

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Director Fedor Bondarchuk already won me over with films like '9th Company' and 'Attraction' (his latest film), which are both among my favorites. I finally got my hands on 'Stalingrad' and watched it in great anticipation, and wasn't let down one bit! 'Stalingrad' is among my favorite war films. It was also one of the more touching war films, and not detailed gore like some war movies. I really enjoyed the back ground stories of each of the main characters. All of them had a very definite reason for being there and being who they are. The film features some of the best visuals I've ever seen with great sound. The music was awesome, as well. The battle scenes were incredibly well done.

This review contains spoilers.Stalingrad is a war movie set in the second Wold War in the Battle of Stalingrad. The movie follows both the Soviet and German army's perspectives as the battle unfolds. Most of the story follows the perspectives of Soviet soldiers that find shelter in an apartment building.This movie is a mess. Many story arcs are jumbled that causes the audience to be unable to follow a character well. The story tried to do too much and it only causes the audience to be confused. The Soviet soldiers in the apartment are fine as characters on their own, but the movie follows each of them causing a jumbling mess. This is further exacerbated by the movie spending time with the German officer and his Russian collaborator. Many of these characters die with their arcs unfulfilled which adds to the pointlessness of following the characters.Besides the story, the action is decent but not impressive. The action could have been better directed, with some of the computer effects being bland. The sound design is great and I did not hear any blaring problems. Some of the action scenes are worth watching. Overall, I would not recommend Stalingrad. It is a movie with many problems in its plot. Some of the action scenes are worth watching even if it leans heavily on propaganda.

As I laboured to get to the end of this film, I kept waiting for that moment when the director would finally let the audience know why they were made to endure this tedious nonsense. Alas, the end came, and we were all left wondering what the director was thinking, what motivated him to make this film, and what he was hoping to achieve. Clearly the director assumed the topic of the Stalingrad battle had been elaborated so much that he did not want to focus on the battle itself. This certainly disappointed a lot of viewers, though, who still expected an epic battle. But in my view, it was not inherently a weakness. Thus I expected an exploration of the battle and the impact on those involved, instead of watching endless scenes of carnage. The problem is that these characters, even after more than two hours of parading on the screen and after long and tedious exposition from a narrator, remained stiff, boring, and unappealing. There is nothing taking place between these characters that even scratches the surface of a potentially good story. Nothing. It's a poorly written melodrama that no one would want to watch were it not called 'Stalingrad'. As for the battle scenes, they are utterly pointless, have almost zero impact on the plot, are utterly unrealistic, and boring. This is largely due to slow motion, something every viewer probably cursed inside himself as we were treated to 'Matrix' fight scenes in a CGI environment of 'Stalingrad'. Nobody came to see that. Not only was it boring, but it was an insult to the men who fought and died at Stalingrad. They deserved better than ridiculous fight scenes and substandard melodrama that can't even match cheap romance novels you find on the shelf at the local supermarket. This is bad film making on every level. The city looks fake due to copious use of green screen and CGI, the characters are cardboard cutouts, the plot is nonexistent, the action is directed extremely poorly, the ending is utterly disappointing, the actions of the characters are by and large nonsensical, and the whole film comes across as unpersuasive drivel that is guaranteed to bore you to death.

Two movies with the same title, the German made Stalingrad (1993) and 20 years younger Russian Stalingrad (2013) had some similarities but also important differences in their depicting of historically important battle from 1942/43.Both movies have thematic content that resembles each other. Besides shoeing us the same event, the same place and the same time, Stalingrads have a few important motives in common. Namely, spectators ate witnesses of a tragic situation of women who are forced to become mistresses of the conquerors and now fall in risk to be shot by their "liberators". In some way similar situation are German - Russian couples which are in danger from both sides.Stalingrad (2013), as expected, will attract public with spectacular, state of the art, scenes which were not available at the time Stalingrad (1993) was made. Another advantage of the newer film is start of the story in Stalingrad during the battle. Characters of the former are hard to track since they completely change their appearance during the battle. On the other hand, German version is way better in depicting horrors of war, everyday sufferings from fear, exhaustion, hunger, illness, cold, friendly fire and wounds. In this aspect Stalingrad (2013) is little more than a fairy tale in which heroic Russian soldiers beat evil Germans despite all the odds and only one person suffering from lice is no one else but a German general.So if you are making video clips about war be sure to check S(2013). But if you had a grandfather who fought in this battle S(1993) will be more informative. For other purposes we will have to wait for another 10 or 20 years.