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Stalingrad 2013 Movie Review

I saw the trailer of this movie once and really really liked it. What was really interesting was the Thomas Kretschmann acted in a movie with the same name exactly 20 years back. Stalingrad was released in 1993 and the young Kretschmann played the role of a dutiful but conscientious German leutnant of the ill fated 6th Armee. Here also he comes back, slightly older and rugged. The spectacular visuals, the background sound and the lack of background music makes it a realistic watch.

That is all positive that I have to say about this trash. Yes, that's what I will this. Naturally, while watching this I brought in similar scenes of Stalingrad (1993) among other war movies. And in comparison this movies cuts so sorry a figure that I dared not watch the entire movie even! The story starts of slow enough and just completely refused to pick up pace. The entire movie seemed to be directed by an amateur school student, bolstered by some insanely talented special effects team. This made the whole affair a more grotesque display of a skill-less marathon of pathetic film making. This also gained the distinction of being the only war film that I had to seek forward and skip to watch entirely.

The plot is plain idiotic and I usually give in some spoilers. Here if I indulge in that, nothing will be left of the film. So I will refrain. What drew me were the action scenes I saw in the trailers. With baited breath I waited for the battle scenes to come up. And what do I see? I better not say.

This movie has also successfully butchered historical accuracy completely. We see Soviet snipers shoot lowly feldwebels and leave German Majors untouched in their sights! We see all Russian troops moving nicely towards the Stalingrad front, without so much of the prodding of the NKVD men in black. We see Soviet soldiers armed to the teeth as opposed to the sorry reality! We even see the Soviet protagonist view a panorama of the destroyed city from the Red Square, from the roof of a building in clear view of the enemy, all the while the Germans still held it!

The final nail in the coffin of this movie was dealt by battle scenes. Though the skills of the special effects team are commendable, it was brilliantly turned into a liability by some of the worst direction I have ever seen. Just when I was dozing off, and gathered myself to focus on an impending fight, I was greeted with a time killing slow mo. One slow mo followed another, when the entire battle scenes altered between a few seconds of realtime action and slowed scenes. It almost felt that the director wanted to kill the movie by boring the audience to death. Exceptional scenes died a slow and painful death as Soviet soldiers, all armed with PPsh guns climbed stupidly through an inferno and charged on a trench - all the while being burnt to death! And imagine every single battle scene filled with such slow mos.

As soon as the nightmare was over, I simply cursed the Russians for not finishing off the Germans faster enough. But then the director made most deaths(excluding a rather ridiculous scene at the German HQ) into slow mos. Never watch this movie, if you know anything about history, have watched the previous Stalingrad movie or just simply are into making good use of your time.

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