While making a movie on a shoestring is a challenge, bad decisions have been made to make this movie bad. For instance, we are served poorly executed battles that are obviously located in the same area that has to represent Russia in 1943 and Normandy in 1944. These battles just look downright fake. Coupled with this is the poor acting, marred by dubbing, the poorly cinematography(shaky handy cams!) the endless boring battles scenes and finally the borrowing from the thin red line.(long intro, voice overs, chaotic battle scenes, a lot of pondering and thinking).
The movie is presented as the story of a regular guy serving in the SS. It is literally announced at the start of the movie. However, the movie plays this fiddle a bit too much. For example: at one moment the subject is raised why the men joined the SS and it is presented as if they just wanted to do their duty. But the SS was not just some regular army unit. The SS were selected men, all volunteers, who adhered to a certain ideology and are noted for a long list of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Notably, the unit in this movie, the 1st SS, was notorious for this.
While the subject could have been interesting, the movie does not make much use of it. Where moral ambiguity would have been interesting, this is downplayed and only brought up at the end of the movie and the cloaked in a kind of apologetic by showing that the allies were bad as well. It would have been a much better movie if it had shown the SS as they were, brave perhaps, but brutish as well, and so perhaps explain how they could do the things they did. Now we just get to see what we have already seen before. A soldier getting tired of war and disillusioned. That we have seen before and seen done a lot better.