About the fact of Russians being barely armed charging headlong into battle- that was about the only part of the movie that was accurate. Beevor and many many Russian historians confirm the incredible carnage in late september and October of the 62nd Army under Chuikov- and how they were driven into battle under threat of death. Germans who survived attest to mountains of Russians dead in front of their positions- so much so that the bodies had to be burnt because the mounds of russian dead provided cover for the following waves. Surely you won't deny the existence of Penal battalions as well? The Germans actually adopted the idea from the Russians during the assault on Berlin.
I don't deny for a moment the amount of dead...that was true, but they were all heavily armed. There were massive stockpiles of arms moved...enough so to arm to the teeth almost 100,000 civilians who were the first line of defense before the 62nd ever got there. Yekomenko ordered the evacuation of all non combatents (read children, sick, pregnant and old) out of the city on 24 August, 2 weeks before the Wehrmacht really arrived but several days after the first major bombing by the Luftwaffe...that killed 40,000. As a matter of fact, over 10,000 civilians were butchered by the Luftwaffe while on the docks, waiting evacuation. The civilians were trapped between the cliffs and the docks with Stukas dive bombing them....pure murder.
The part of the old woman trying to get on the boat and being pulled off is bogus.
A lot of the fighting was done with hand grenades. If you read Enemy at the Gates, the Russians were seeing the same thing about the Germans. One Russian platoon held out for a week in a department store. The survivors said that the fountain outside the store was covered with german dead from the body waves they were doing across the square. They finally fell when their recoiless rounds ran out and the Germans did a major tank push.