Work movie #3

Well, my work Christmas 'fuck you' continues!  I just finished watching Stalingrad today at work.



First of all, I have to thank my buddy Corey for hooking me up on this one.  The master of pirated movies, music, and other things Torrent hooked me up with this as a 'Christmas present'.

I was really REALLY looking forward to this one.  However, Corey had warned me that it wasnt quite what either of us were hoping for.

First of all - a caveat:
My review could be totally wrong, because the copy that we had was a terrible translation from Russian and German, first to Polish, and then to English!  Im not really sure what was going on - there were some Russians, and some Germans, and a couple naked chicks, and some battles.  Maybe a singer too.

Without going crazy with a long ass review, the short version is that this movie is loosely based on the events surrounding 'Pavlov's House' during the battle of Stalingrad in WW2.  In 'real life', an understrength platoon of Russian soldiers occupy an apartment building for nearly 2 months against wave after wave of Nazi attackers.

First of all - the good.  The scenery in this one was absolutely outstanding.  The ruins of Stalingrad are portrayed perfectly, and you feel like the world has long ago ended there.  Also, there are lots of accurate weapons and armor, which made me really happy.

Also, two characters stuck out to me (in a good way!) - one, the German captain Kahn tasked with overtaking the apartment building is played by Thomas Kretschmann and the other is the lone civilian in the Russian building, Katia, played by Mariya Smolnikova.

I wont really get into the 'bad' other than I thought a few of the scenes felt contrived to me.  There are a couple of 'love stories' that really seem out of place, and I draw a comparison to the 'prostitute' scene from another Russian war movie '9th Company'.  There is an attempt to show the human spirit, how love overcomes the situation, blah blah blah, but it just didnt really fit to me here.

The story of the defense of Stalingrad is a heroic, yet brutal one.  Not to sound crass, but I was hoping for some more battle scenes.  The few that occur are done relatively well (save the final one which is total BS including an artillery strike that had the Russians been able to do in real life, the defense of Stalingrad would have never have even had the opportunity to happen)

Im glad I watched it, because Ive been following the trailers for nearly a year now, and to be able to get a English translated version only 2 months after it was released in Russian theaters was totally awesome.  However, aside from a couple actors, this one is kind of a bomb in my opinion.  Im going to have to give it 2 out of 5 Raptors Claws!

Tomorrow, my 'fuck you work' continues at the movie theater.  Im going to see Anchorman 2 on my lunch break!  3 hour lunches are ok right????