Driving by their rage and resentment upon the German army that causes havoc and a great chaos in the region, by the bloodshed they held against innocents, a group of strong warriors do their best, in order to set up a wall that make them save from that ruthless army, the thing that brings terrible for them.
Overall, Stalingrad is a bizarre concoction, part Putin-era patriotic chest-thumping and part creaky war melodrama, all set in a superbly recreated ruined city.
while the narrative encourages a sense of philosophical reflection about the horrors of war, the film's video-game-inspired look constantly puts us at a distance by overly aestheticizing the violence with extreme slow motion and bullet time effects
It's exciting to see post-communism Russian cinema patriotically revisiting its own history like this. I didn't mind the clichés, because part of Stalingrad's 131-minute charm is that in some ways it feels 40 years old.
To wave a flag, sing a song and celebrate it as the uncomplicated and inevitable victory of good over evil is the sort of easy message only an old propagandist - or a president for life - could really cheer.
Too often does [Bondarchuk] goad his characters to brim over with righteous bloodlust-and, despite the occasional obligatory misgiving about the barbarism of war, goads the audience to lust right along with them.
