Starring: Maria Smolnikova, Pyotr Fyodorov, Dmitry Lysenkov
Amidst the fighting of the Second World War, the military of Nazi Germany have attempted to travel eastwards, facing off against the armies of the Soviet Union. Having taken the major city of Stalingrad, a young woman (Smolnikova) and a small band of Soviet soldiers seek to defend the city, whilst holed within an old house, at all cost.
Having made a name for itself in at home in Russia, Stalingrad has been able to secure some major distribution in he UK, playing on IMAX Screens in 3D. It would seem that nothing less than a monumental scale would suit this Russian war drama, but beneath its bluster and scope, there's a film that is significantly flawed.
Director Fedor Bondarchuk seems to feel at home with the war genre. The son of director and actor Sergey Bondarchuk, director of Waterloo (1970), the younger Bondarchuk creates an environment of machine gun fire and chaos that sets the scene, but pulls from a very small bag of tricks. Namely, his work seems to imitate that of Zack Snyder. Set pieces against backdrops seemingly plucked from 300 (2006), the gimmickry of 3D whizzing past and the film plays way too much in slow-motion.
The film also plays uncomfortably close to propaganda. Understandably, when your villains are the Nazis, there's only a certain amount of humanity with which you can paint them and still get out of it well (Das Boot (1981) such a rare example) but our heroes are mostly square-jawed and macho archetypes whilst the Nazis don't come off as having much character. The lone exception, besides a decadent senior officer, is the siege commander played by Thomas Kretschmann, a man who has played murderous rapists (The Stendahl Syndrome (2005)), Nazi playboys (Downfall (2004)) and even evil automobiles (Cars 2 (2011)). Even if in this he is given a romantic subplot, it's a distinctly unsettling one that lumbers into rape and loathing.
When Stalingrad actually calms down and bathes in the cold, frosty atmosphere of its surroundings, its clear that there is promise here. Had the film been made at an earlier time before CGI allowed you to see everything, I feel this film would've benefitted from the isolation and only rare glimpses of spectacle. Unfortunately, the film puts too much on show and with too much style and gloss and consequently loses much of the atmosphere and soul. A potentially great film, brought low by too much flash.
Next time, aspiring cop Kevin Hart is invited to prove himself to veteran officer and potential brother-in-law Ice Cube in Ride Along.
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