Gmork76 In spite of the goofs and cheesiness I really enjoy this movie. Had it been made today with young b actors it would be a disaster. The 80's tone and the great actors of this movie is hilarious. The story is simple but it gets you going through the movie with a few laughs and hilarious moments, like when Oliver Reed makes an entrance as German general. The goofs are also fun, Soviet made SU-100's makes a stand-in for tank destroyers as Jagdpanzer IV's, Hetzers or StuG's (or German captured SU-100's) It's filmed in former Yugoslavia, and many actors are Yugoslavians, which is good and contributes to the realism. One fun trivia if you like Cross of Iron (1977), the actor Slavco Stimac who plays Sven also plays the little blonde boy Michail in Cross Of Iron. He have had a real career since then.Sven Hassels books are a good read if you find them. They sorta continue with some of the characters and their achievements and defeats in WWIIWatch it, it's even available on Bluray with 1080p and DD Surround only but it stills is an upgrade over DVD.

charliedestartinn I feel very close to what Laybarsinister said . As a long range reader of Sven Hassle books , I have been amazed by how close from the images we built at reading the Hassle war squad story , the actors have been selected. Especially Tiny , Old man and Alfred Kalb-the légionnaire -, they are so close in their physical and in their behavior,that there is almost no gap at all between the film and the book, which is a very rare performance ! Cheers for the choice of actors and for the actors themselves!.Forinstance Porta does not look so close, physically, but his actor job is so excellent, that we may think all of them are avid readers and fans of Hassle's books.This little film is unpretentious yet surprisingly a kind of artistic success in restoring the spirit of a story as the author has told it in his writing.Once more,a very rare success,as film makers don't usually bother too much sticking to the writer actual storyboard. Only one regret : with this team of actors and the Hassle saga ,so full of events and historical facts ,it could have given 2 or 3 more films without any danger of boring the public .

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews Yes, for the intended group of viewers, this apparently hits the mark, according to the reviewer of a respectable paper here. I didn't have to look for that; they put it on the cover. Another piece of evidence for how desperate they were to find *something* positive and inciting to put on there is the fact that they make mention of Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide giving it no less than two stars... you know, out of four. Is that supposed to be high praise? What, are they just proud that he noticed its existence at all? I get the impression that the following facts are not widely known in the rest of the world, and want to set the record straight. Sven Hassle is a fraud. He almost definitely never experienced battle, he talked to a bunch of people who had. It is probable that his wife authored the books(I haven't read a word of them, but what I hear is that they're pure war pornography), he dictated them to her. A Nazi, he worked for the Germans during the war, and then turned in his buddies in hopes of reducing his sentence once they lost. Whether or not it worked, he still got(though did not serve all) 10 years; in comparison, those who had worked as soldiers for the Germans got between two and four years, or only one. The allegations are confidential, so we don't know what he did; however, it can't have been all that small. This does match the tone of the novels, as far as I understand. The wise-guy attitude, as well. This comes dangerously close to throwing out all credibility and tension right at the beginning, and then proceeds to do so not much later, and then, in case anyone was still caring about anything that happens in this, it goes even further. Are we meant to accept whatever this deems fit to toss at us? What, because WW2 happened? This does not treats it with enough respect for that to be sufficient on its own. There is next to no sense of danger, the characters get off too easily. This has entirely too many goofy and silly instances, and it gets to be embarrassing. It makes the rest of the film tough to take seriously; I mean, it's farcical at times. We're talking cringe-inducing. Gone is the majority of the impact of the couple of powerful, emotional moments(also on account of them being immediately preceded or concluded by "comic relief" that isn't funny), what there is of authenticity, realism and richness in detail. You get an idea of how minuscule the charges had to be to get imprisoned... well, they seem fine. They get bad food in small portions! Don't worry, no one has a single line where they complain about it. Penal corps! Safe. Collective punishment! A punch-line. All that has any effect is the kid and the catch-22 of sorts/test. The tank action is reasonable. This has good pacing here and there. And it is impressive that the Hollywood aspect is not what ruins this(which is not to say it helps). The cast have a lot of acting chops, it's unfortunate they don't get to show it in this. There is a lot of disturbing content, a bit of violence, some strong language and a little nudity and sexuality in this. I recommend this to fans of the written originals, I guess. 5/10

ETO_Buff When I saw that this movie was released in 1987, I was worried that it might be another 80s low-budget "wanna-be-big-war-movie" the likes of The Big Red One or Casablanca Express. Sad to say that my assumptions were correct.When I watch other movies on DVD that contain deleted scenes, I sometimes wonder why a director deleted certain scenes. If the scenes were deleted from this one that should have been, there would not have been much left.There isn't much more to say about this flick, except that I was never sure if it was supposed to be a comedy or a serious movie.