49
Metascore
23 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekVillage VoiceStephanie ZacharekLush with feeling that could easily be mistaken for sentimentality, Stalingrad is more like a 19th-century novel than a 21st-century blockbuster. It's theatrical and intense, sometimes in an overbearing way, but it's never boring.
- 70The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungThe Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungIt is a strange cross-breed between an old-fashioned WWII epic full of genre cliches and a modern update whose meticulous historical recreation is frighteningly real.
- 67Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyEntertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyStalingrad is a 3-D epic that's one-dimensional.
- 63McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMcClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreIn detail and combat spectacle, Stalingrad is hard to beat. And whatever its failings, one can’t help but be curious about a story as connected to national identity as this one, a film that like today’s Russia, feels more Soviet than Russian.
- A solid enough war flick, but Spielberg doesn’t have too much to worry about yet.
- 60Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfHollywood does this too; truth be told, Russia’s high-tech whitewash goes down smooth like vodka.
- 40Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonTime Out LondonTom HuddlestonWhen the best one can say about a movie is that it’s pyrotechnically impressive, something important is missing. In this case it’s tension, originality and memorable characters.
- 40The TelegraphTim RobeyThe TelegraphTim RobeyThe macho showmanship of director Fyodor Bondarchuk, wedded to such a facile script, turns this undeniably impressive megaproduction into a behemoth you mainly want to cower from.
- 38Slant MagazineDrew HuntSlant MagazineDrew HuntIts blind reverence toward the Russian mythos is so grandiose that it becomes impossible to rescue it from self-importance, and as such President Putin would likely give it two big thumbs up.
- 30VarietyJay WeissbergVarietyJay WeissbergAssaults are filmed in ubiquitous slow-mo to better register the way bodies are thrown into the air. It’s all rather confusing, actually, since the monochromatic tonalities and weak script, lacking in any comprehensible battle strategy, tend to meld the two sides together.