Cross Of iron (1977)
 Director
Sam Peckinpah switches from his trademark westerns such as The
Wild Bunch to another kind of savagery - this time it's the
Germans in retreat on the Russian Front during World War II - and
makes as graphic an antiwar film as anything since All Quiet on
the Western Front.
In this adaptation of a book by Willi Heinrich, James Coburn is
the disillusioned German sergeant, sickened by slaughter and the
double dealings of officers such as Maximilian Schell.
There's little room for women in Peckinpah's exercise in macho
ideals, though an encounter with girl guerrillas shows them
exacting revenge with dreadful results.
This is bloody action, elegantly choreographed to chilling
effect.
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