recommended

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

About the desperate resistance of a brave few antifascist men and women, against overwhelming odds, in the early 30's, fighting the Hitler regime. The action takes the viewer deep inside the thirdreich of 1934, the civil war in Spain, into the Caucasus mountains of soviet Russia and into soviet occupied (or liberated) east Germany. On one side you view the European resistance fighters, from all walks of life, and on the Nazi side, stunningly believable three dimensional characters, that come not out of a "black villain and white Knight" mill of Hollywood. Just as the German title suggests its a front without mercy. No quarters given or expected. The film contains surprisingly little communist propaganda. It is so very sad, that this line of movies have gotten under the shroud of nonrecognition and forgotten. They do not deserve it. They are mostly top quality productions, it's only the brand "made in the GDR" that makes them appear unattractive. This film definitely deserves a DVD release.