Cross of Iron (1977)

What could be a better Christmas movie than what's probably Sam Peckinpah's last big film (after this, his only other films were Convoy and The Osterman Weekend)? Set in the late stages of World War II, on the Eastern Front, focused primarily on Sgt. Rolf Steiner (James Coburn).

The Nazis are retreating, and in various stages of acceptance of that fact, but Steiner and his squad are still covering the rear on those retreats, or even sometimes probing the Soviet's defense and eliminating entrenched positions. Steiner gets injured at one point and spends some time in a hospital, but heads back to the front as soon as he sees one of his men doing likewise.

Most of the movie takes place after that, and turns on issues between Steiner and the captain that assumed command earlier in the film, Stransky. Stransky's descended from Prussian aristocracy, and feels he must be awarded the Iron Cross, but neglects to actually do the sorts of things that make that happen. Instead, he claims credit for leading a counterattack he took no part in, and Steiner knows it.

Of course, the joke (if you can call it that) is Steiner barely cares. He has the chance to blow the whole thing apart before Stransky can backstab him, and declines. He has an Iron Cross, but it means nothing to him, so what does he care if Stransky gets one to uphold tradition or not? He just wants to keep his men alive, something which is basically impossible in this circumstance. Coburn carries an air of alternately weary disgust and desperation.

There are a lot of combat sequences, and Peckinpah keeps those focused at the scale of Steiner's unit. Small shootouts between a half-dozen soldiers on both sides, or a hurried retreat from a single tank in the middle of an artillery barrage. Fair amount of slow motion as guys get machine gunned or thrown into the air by explosions. There's the occasional cut to HQ, where Steiner's colonel and his adjutant (played by David Warner) are watching the entire situation disintegrate to offer a little sense of scale of the defeat, but that's not really what the film's about. I think it's more, "why are these guys still fighting at this point?"

Granted, it's unlikely the Soviets were going to be taking many prisoners, and surviving as a Soviet prisoner might be worse than death. But Colonel Brandt rallies retreating troops at the end and leads them back into the teeth of the Soviet offensive. Steiner and Stransky do the same, just the two of them. Stransky apparently wanting to prove he really does have what it takes to earn the medal, and Steiner just hasn't anything to go home to, so what the hell. He tried to get his men back safely, and that's over, so there's just the fighting.

The movie begins and ends with a song called "Little Hans", seemingly sung by a kid's chorus, about a boy who goes off to see the world and returns unrecognizable to anyone save his mother. Did all these characters really go off to war so unaware of what awaited them? Or maybe the point is they saw only the chance for glory or camaraderie, and never anticipated the horror of it all. It was a great adventure, and boy, won't all their friends and family be surprised when they get home, all grown up? Well, most of them don't get home, and the ones that do, nobody recognizes them, but it's nothing to be happy about.