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A real director is at his best when he works with material that reflects his own life patterns. At a film festival, after ”Pat Garrett” had become the latest of his films to be emasculated by a studio, he was asked if he would ever make a ”pure Peckinpah” and he replied, ”I did ‘Alfredo Garcia’ and I did it exactly the way I wanted to. Good or bad, like it or not, that was my film.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia :: rogerebert.com :: Great Movies - I’ve seen this film only twice (so far), but I can say without reservation that it’s my favorite Peckinpah film. It is brutal, but not without remorse, and it’s got heart unlike any other film I’ve ever seen. That, in a nutshell, is what Peckinpah is all about.

If you’re a Peckinpah fan, do yourself a favor and buy a copy.

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Cross of Iron is an anti-war film in that it focuses on the average foot soldier, the harshness of his daily existence, and the horrors inflicted on him by war. These men dream about survival, peace, sex and home. Yet Steiner, like many of Peckinpah’s male protagonists, is unwilling or incapable of being open to other ways of existing. He no longer knows where home is or where his children are; he hates the war but is fearful of what he will be without it. Dead to a world of other possibilities, what he chooses is to feel alive in the ecstatic moment of freedom achieved through the confrontation with violence and death.
Cross of Iron : The last paragraph from an essay on Cross of Iron by Gabrielle Murray, “a lecturer in the Cinema Studies program at La Trobe University.”

Briefly - Cross of Iron

I was looking forward to seeing Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron tonight, but having just finished it, I can’t find anything good to say about it. The disappointment struck such a chord with me that I wrote my first Netflix review (and possibly one of the first reviews I’ve ever submitted to any online service):

A disjointed, poorly-edited mishmash of anti-war sentiment and meaningless heroics. There’s a kernel of a good film in here, but it is lost in slow-motion explosions and blood-spurts. The film suffers from a lack of real direction, substituting chaos and confusion for drama and contemplation, giving the film as a whole a surreal quality that pervades it from the children singing in the opening credits, to Coburn’s maniacal laughter finishing with a grim, “Aw sh*t,” before the screen goes black. A disappointing film from a great director.

I almost wish I hadn’t already sealed the DVD back in the return envelope to Netflix so I could capture some stills and write a longer essay, but, sad to admit it, I don’t think I could sit through it a second time. Peckinpah’s themes are in there (the meaning of masculinity, female brutality, senselessness of violence), but his message and the narrative is lost in a film without finesse.