The Victors

A World War II picture with a weightiness all its own that follows an American infantry unit from Sicily, up through Europe, to the fall of Berlin and after. Foreman adds nothing to William Wellman's portrait of an ordinary GI unit in Battleground (1949). Instead of the emotional complexity of the earlier film, Foreman offers a rather cheap and shallow sense of irony, sometimes effective, more often ponderous. Interludes between campaigns are beefed up by the presence of various sexy European actresses; Hamilton, Peppard, Wallach and Fonda play some of the soldiers who get theirs at various stages of the long slog towards the death of the last one at the hands of a drunken Russian soldier (Finney) in a knife fight in Occupied Berlin.