As Russia has nothing to be proud of, they opened a can withfictional heroes, who are bullet, flame and steel resistant.

As I laboured to get to the end of this film, I kept waiting for that moment when the director would finally let the audience know why they were made to endure this tedious nonsense. Alas, the end came, and we were all left wondering what the director was thinking, what motivated him to make this film, and what he was hoping to achieve. Clearly the director assumed the topic of the Stalingrad battle had been elaborated so much that he did not want to focus on the battle itself. This certainly disappointed a lot of viewers, though, who still expected an epic battle. But in my view, it was not inherently a weakness. Thus I expected an exploration of the battle and the impact on those involved, instead of watching endless scenes of carnage. The problem is that these characters, even after more than two hours of parading on the screen and after long and tedious exposition from a narrator, remained stiff, boring, and unappealing. There is nothing taking place between these characters that even scratches the surface of a potentially good story. Nothing. It's a poorly written melodrama that no one would want to watch were it not called 'Stalingrad'. As for the battle scenes, they are utterly pointless, have almost zero impact on the plot, are utterly unrealistic, and boring. This is largely due to slow motion, something every viewer probably cursed inside himself as we were treated to 'Matrix' fight scenes in a CGI environment of 'Stalingrad'. Nobody came to see that. Not only was it boring, but it was an insult to the men who fought and died at Stalingrad. They deserved better than ridiculous fight scenes and substandard melodrama that can't even match cheap romance novels you find on the shelf at the local supermarket. This is bad film making on every level. The city looks fake due to copious use of green screen and CGI, the characters are cardboard cutouts, the plot is nonexistent, the action is directed extremely poorly, the ending is utterly disappointing, the actions of the characters are by and large nonsensical, and the whole film comes across as unpersuasive drivel that is guaranteed to bore you to death.

Two movies with the same title, the German made Stalingrad (1993) and 20 years younger Russian Stalingrad (2013) had some similarities but also important differences in their depicting of historically important battle from 1942/43.Both movies have thematic content that resembles each other. Besides shoeing us the same event, the same place and the same time, Stalingrads have a few important motives in common. Namely, spectators ate witnesses of a tragic situation of women who are forced to become mistresses of the conquerors and now fall in risk to be shot by their "liberators". In some way similar situation are German - Russian couples which are in danger from both sides.Stalingrad (2013), as expected, will attract public with spectacular, state of the art, scenes which were not available at the time Stalingrad (1993) was made. Another advantage of the newer film is start of the story in Stalingrad during the battle. Characters of the former are hard to track since they completely change their appearance during the battle. On the other hand, German version is way better in depicting horrors of war, everyday sufferings from fear, exhaustion, hunger, illness, cold, friendly fire and wounds. In this aspect Stalingrad (2013) is little more than a fairy tale in which heroic Russian soldiers beat evil Germans despite all the odds and only one person suffering from lice is no one else but a German general.So if you are making video clips about war be sure to check S(2013). But if you had a grandfather who fought in this battle S(1993) will be more informative. For other purposes we will have to wait for another 10 or 20 years.

I have live during a war and see how a real one is. This movie is one of the best about WW2 I have ever seen, from the point of real life view of how soldiers and people -citizens- react under those circumstances. Also may not represent the real Stalingrad battle but that's not my point here.It is slow and bit boring sometimes and yes most viewers will like more action and explosions and gore. Forget all about those brave super heroes you see from Hollywood movies. It is not like this not at all. An example that's a standard cliché in all movies now, the sergeant opens the vehicle door and shouts "go go go go soldiers get them, lets show those !!!! what we really are" etc etc. That's a bad joke. It is not like that in the line of fire and when soldiers run out from the transportation vehicle and the first bomb drops nearby even 300 meter away its nothing like what we see in movies not even at 10 % close.