Product Description

Widescreen Special Edition DVD Features include:
Audio Commentary by film scholar Stephen Prince, author of Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies
Original Theatrical Trailer
Photo Gallery of German Lobby Cards
Language Options: English, French
New Widescreen 16:9 Anamorphic Transfer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17590 in DVD
• Brand: Cross
• Released on: 2006-04-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French, German, Russian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 119 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Sam Peckinpah weighs in on World War II--and from the German point of view. The result is as bleak, if not quite as bloody, as one expects, in part because the 1977 film was cut to ribbons by nervous studio executives. The assorted excerpts that remain don't constitute an exhilarating or even an especially thrilling battle epic. The war is grinding to a close, and veterans like James Coburn's Steiner are grimly aware that it's a lost cause. The battlefield is a death trap of sucking mud and barbed wire, and the German generals (viz., the martinet played by James Mason) seem to pose a bigger threat to the life and limbs of Steiner's men than the inexorable enemy. Not even Peckinpah's famous sensuous exuberance when shooting violence is much in evidence; the picture is a depressive, claustrophobically overcast experience. The bloody high (or low) point isn't a shooting; it's a wince-inducing de-penis-tration during oral sex. For a fun time with the men in (Nazi) uniform, try Das Boot instead. --David Chute