Pros:
1. The dialogue is incredibly grounded and genuine, thus giving the conversations an air of realism to the adolescent boy interactions.
2. The cinematography is gorgeously scaled-back, again adding to the realistic feel.
3. The short intermittent sing-a-long scenes in Hindu-Urdu are exceedingly entertaining, bizarre, and eye-popping.
4. The film does a great job at highlighting the similarities between The West and pre-Mujahideen Afghanistan.
Cons:
1. The movie is needlessly slow-paced and, at times, is a little bit of a chore to get through.
2. Most of the characters are unspeakably plane and uninteresting, with nothing to them (the exception being Qodrat (Quodratollah Qadiri) as he's shown to be thrifty, however that trait is shown early on and is then forgotten about).
3. The acting is generally really stale and uninspiring.
4. The script is unfocused, disjointed, and it often feels that the scenes are just jumping from one-to-the-next with little coherence.
5. There are copious sub-plots introduced, and then carelessly discarded with no resolution. With examples being, Qodrat's possible love interest, or the Russian military presence and Russian diplomatic ties to pre-Mujahideen Afghanistan.
6. The ending death of Anwar (Anwar Hashimi) falls resolutely flat as he's barely a character, and the death isn't set up at all. It also doesn't help that there's this strange sing-and-fight sequence straight after.
