I don't know why in God's name did I bother to watch this film. Not that I was strong enough to force myself to actually watch the thing - I skipped a lot of pointless rubbish and tried to pay attention to some good things I pointlessly tried to find. Anyway... The film portrays a team of Russian Uhlans (type of military formation from the time) trying to kill Bonaparte and some spy guy while getting some Polish ladies to fall in love with them. The trouble is that:
1. Uhlans were Polish. It was a Polish formation. And as Russians were occupying Poland, Polish Uhlans were serving under Bonaparte and trying to fight Russia with him in a futile belief that Bonaparte will make Poland reappear on the map. So there was no such thing as Russian Uhlans. Uhlans were for Bonaparte and against Russia. This is as pointless as showing a Russian Waffen SS battalion trying to kill Hitler. WTF?
2. The whole team acts like the A team or a bunch of John Rambos without AK47's. They get multiple shots off their single shot pistols, slaughter everyone with a single slash of their sabers and blablabla. Maybe if I was a 5 years old Russian I could enjoy that crap.
3. If one decides to show forbidden love between an occupied Polish aristocrat and a Russian soldier (which for some reason is a Uhlan), they should at least try to make it look a bit forbidden, not flourish in plain sight...
4. Bad acting by great actors - Russian Bezrukov, Polish Delag... Way below, I mean way below what we're used to get from these guys.
5. Bad special effects. And I mean bad. Really bad. 6. Bad script. And I don't mean the historical inaccuracy. I mean that the whole story does not hold. The secret passages ending on the roof in plain sight, Russian armies stationing 5 minutes ride from the Bonaparte quarters, bad romance, bad aaaaaa come on, I'm not gonna do this. It's just bad OK?
So was there anything good in the film? I think yes. I did enjoy the costumes a lot. And that would be it.
So summarizing - don't. Don't waste any time watching this shipwreck. I seriously don't understand why would anybody even bother making it! My wife and I speculated that the only reason for making this film was that somebody had found some Uhlan costumes in the attic and decided that after the last Russian Musketeers movie nothing can be worse - so their only way is the way up and convinced everybody else to gather, waste the time they could spend doing nothing and I don't know... keeping respect for themselves; and made them produce this horrible thing.
Don't watch it, seriously.
