On the Eastern Front, a new captain (Maximilian Schell) arrives, filled with pompous surety that he will be awarded the Iron Cross for his bravery, despite the dire projections of the . His commander (James Mason) recognizes him for the useless classist aristocrat he is and warns the platoon leader (James Coburn) that Captain Stransky is going to put the men in danger so he can get a medal. But things turn murderous when Sergeant Steiner refuses to lie on Stransky's award recommendation.
It is a confident man who decides to take a book about Nazis in Russia and try and make them sympathetic. Noble, even. It definitely has a Dirty Dozen feel, with men barely hanging on to the last scraps of their humanity. And it's probably Peckinpah's gayest movie in that he acknowledges gay people exist if only to be blackmailed for it.
Apparently the production was a total shitshow and the project ran out of money before filming finished so the ending is a little abrupt. It ended up having all the prints sold off to pay debts and Peckinpah coughed up $90K of his own money to cover the technicians' pay so it's kind of a miracle this film exists at all. Which may explain why it's not streaming anywhere.
That's okay, though, because I can't in good conscience recommend this one. It's interesting, sure, but there are better WWII films, better Peckinpah films, and damn sure better James Mason/James Coburn films. Maybe we just let this one go.
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