‘Best war film’ better than Saving Private Ryan | Films | Entertainment

A movie tipped as the “best war film there is” has been added to Amazon Prime. Fans believe the film is far superior to the Hollywood classic, Saving Private Ryan, with viewers sharing their thoughts on the underrated 1977 release. The film stars silver screen legend James Coburn in a role that has been praised by viewers.

Cross of Iron received rave reviews on release and has landed well with movie fans watching decades later. Some took to IMDb and hailed the film as superior to the Steven Spielberg-directed Saving Private Ryan, which has become a benchmark among film fans for war movies.

One review of the film reads: “I still rate this as the best and most honest war film I’ve seen. It ignores the Hollywood schmaltz that spoiled Saving Private Ryan and manages to portray the soldiers as human beings and particularly for German soldiers, this is an exception.

“The battle scenes are expansive and very bloody as we follow the German platoon trying to get back to its own lines. The soldiers are heroes in an unheroic war and the film captures the chaos, cynicism and heroism of the German retreat. Well worth checking out.”

Another viewer hailed the film as a “masterpiece” of the genre and claimed it should rank among the very best. They wrote: “Cross Of Iron is a masterpiece, one of the greatest anti-war, anti-authoritarian movies. It is one of director Sam Peckinpah’s two finest works — the other being The Wild Bunch.

“It deserves to be ranked in the same great war movie company as Apocalypse Now, Das Boot, Full Metal Jacket, Paths Of Glory, Saving Private Ryan, Seven Samurai, and Zulu. Its setting on the World War Two Eastern Front, its gruesomeness, and its risk-taking viewpoint on ugly combat from the German side, have tended to count against fair assessment of its considerable artistic achievements.”

The film currently holds a respectable 71% rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The film would also serve as an influence on Oscar-winning filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. The Pulp Fiction director says Cross of Iron served as an influence to his 2009 war film, Inglourious Basterds.

A sequel to Cross of Iron, Breakthrough, was released in 1979 and stars Robert Mitchum.