Director Bondarchuk should be arrested for creating this criminal film. Words cannot describe the depths to which this film has sunk. Every single aspect of it is deluded, pointless, dull, illogical, and irritating. The director has no story and no characters, and uses the film to shove in scenes he thinks are cool. From what I can gather, he loves The Matrix. Not only do we get more slow motion than the average human can endure, but we get stunts that belong in a Matrix film. My God, these soldiers are ninjas, their weapons can do wonders that defy laws of physics, and... What exactly was the film about? Well, absolutely nothing. It's part pathetic melodrama with all the qualities of a soap opera from Mexico, part Matrix. And when it's neither, it's just people sitting and staring, or talking nonsense. You could remove half the scenes and actually make the story more focused and clear. But what would be the point, when the story is so thin and outright insulting? How do you take one of the greatest battles of all time and turn it into a lame story about officers missing their girlfriends? In this film, Russian officers shoot soldiers in order to discipline them, and Germans hold rousing speeches about the prospect of getting sex from six-armed prostitutes in India. Has a madman written this? Or a pretentious, talentless idiot who thought Russian cinema really needed the most moronic cliches from the dumbest action films from Hollywood? This is not the first time Bondarchuk has done this. Oh, no. He has also butchered the memory of the war in Afghanistan, with his Full Metal Jacket/Platoon ripoff. How does this person keep getting any money to make films is beyond me. As I said, his filmmaking is outright criminal. It is an insult to the audience, to film as an art form, and to the Russian soldiers who fought in Stalingrad.
Review of Stalingrad
