TRAILER: Stalingrad (2013)

Heads up.  New WW2 movie incoming.  A big budget Russian epic on the Battle of Stalingrad.  Stalingrad was probably the bloodiest battle in the history of humanity, with 100,000 men dying a week, for five months.  So what do Russian film makers do?  They fuck it up, completely, by inserting a completely needless and unwanted ‘love story’.  The synopsis is about a “dramatic love story against the backdrop of a grand battle”.  I was about to call this incomprehensible, however considering that it is an unusually larger picture by Russian standards (130 million rubles) that is their first fully 3D and IMAX 3D production, you start to wonder if this romantic garbage is inserted in an attempt to widen demographics and recover costs – although the fact that it was probably state funded might suggest otherwise.  The bottom line, though, is the most savage battle in history is, by their own synopsis, reduced to a ‘backdrop’?  How fucking cowardly and predictable.  If you look at the trailer, it seems there are not one, but two romantic subplots, with the German version being a caricature.

Did either the Soviets or Axis soldiers at Stalingrad have time for a relationship and to contemplate life with washy fucking sentimental garbage?  I’d wager not, those men were breaking their backs looking for a scrap of food and trying to survive the next hour.  Call me crazy, but I think the men at Stalingrad had more pressing things on their mind that dating.  This is the most important thing in the story of the most important battle of the most important war?

Stalingrad (2013) is released on the 10th October.  Check out the trailer below…