Rzhev

At last a real good Russian war movie, about the Great Patriotic War, a subject rarely close to real, actual events. There are batches of garbage propaganda stuff, where the Germans are always shown as idiots - idiots who provoked more than 25 millions deaths among the Russian population.....Here, the focus is on the Political Commisars, the Politrouks, who killed anyone who hesitated to fight. This point of view was rarely spoken in Russian movies. In this film, the enemy is maybe more them than the Germans. Political commissars and their bloodthirsty decisions, who ordered the deaths of thousands of soldiers only to take a simple hill. For Staline and his gang, the human life of their own fellows was nothing. They were more than Germans; one Nazi for one hundred Russians. An unbalanced fight. I have always found weird and not logical that people defending their life, freedom and homeland - the Russians - needed Political commissars to prevent them to desert.....The Nazis did not in Russia; maybe for obvious reasosn though. Where a deserter would have been, among the "Untermenschen", slavic "under men'; they were safer in the middle of their own "kameraden'...So, to summarize, I highly recommend this feature.

No pun intended, really not meant to offend anyone either. You are literally thrown into the second world war though. There is no romantic sentiment or anything close to that in here. Yes the Russians are being shown as heroes and as strong as you can imagine. That being said, try not to compare that situation with what is going on right now in Ukraine.

I may be a bit too nice describing the current situation. But that is not about that, it is about the horror of war. And what it sometimes takes to win - even if it may not always feel that way. And that even the smallest victories can have a big impact. If you are what they call a history buff, you will know what I mean - or after you watch the movie it will become apparent too. A lot of violence obviously, but that is what happens during war - this does not hold back on anything.

I think when making the war movies, especially the WWII movies, the Russian movie industries is the very best, then the South Korean. Sorry, Hollywood is even worse than the Chinese movie makers. But the Chinese movies got a propaganda problem which is seriously censored by the CCP government. The modern Russia, on the contrary, when they made movies about WWII, besides to portray how bravely the Russian soldiers and the common citizens fought against the Nazi Germany invasion, they also used the opportunity to mock the ridiculous Soviet Russia's tight control of their military forces, like the CCP now controls everything. If you watch this movie, you would find such cynical mockery to their former Soviet Communist Party's stupidity. It asked the Russian soldiers to fight for their motherland, but at the same time, punishing those who were against their cruel communist policies.

I absolutely agreed with what the sole review said about this movie, this movie indeed captured me the whole time. The battle scenes are top notched directed, acted, edited, even the music is perfectly synchronized and so relevant with the battle scenes and all the situations. This movie is indeed one of the Best 2nd World War movies. Strongly recommended.

I also would like to recommend the following classic Russian movies for you; they are all great movies, most are about WWII:

Ballad of A Soldier (1959), The Forty-first (1956), The Cranes Are Flying (1957), Battle for Sevastopol (2015), Zvezda (The Star) 2002, The Tank Battalion (1991), Andrei Rublev (1966), Battalion (2015), Blizzard of Souls (The Rifleman) 2019, Fortress of War (2010)

I have no idea why the 5.8 score exists for this film. It truly is bewildering. Apparently the people scoring this film low are either Soviet sympathizers, Nazi sympathizers, or hate realistic war films?

I don't know. The low score makes no sense to me.

What does make sense to me is that director Igor Kopylov crafts a fine film around one of the many pivotal battles that helped shape Russia's eventual victory over the Germans leading up to the battle of Stalingrad.

Ovsyannikovo was one of the many small strategic points in the battlefield that the Soviets needed to capture to push the Germans out. The film itself is just a small look at the many lives lost trying to capture and secure this small village.

The film does a fine job of not shying away from the brutal and sadistic nature of the Germans to secure victory (massacring and raping civilians) and then systematically wiping out opposing forces.

The film also does a fine job of making it known that some of the biggest hurdles the Russian army faced in the war was from Soviet leadership!

The bureaucracy and stupidity of the Soviets cost many great and brave men their lives. A central sub-plot to the film outlines how the already thinning company would lose additional soldiers over the most trivial and banal of things.

But this is what happened, and this is why so many Russians died during World War II (and thereafter during the reign of the Soviet Union).

As far story structure is concerned, the film mostly only centers around the men stationed Ovsyannikovo, with a few snippets of the commanding officers trying to justify their logic in not sending reinforcements or properly aiding their soldiers. I almost wanted to spit into the face of the commanders wasting he lives of these brave soldiers; that's just how engrossing the film had become.

But what's more is that all of this feels authentic. Kopylov makes the battles feel grounded and realistic for the most part, and some soldiers suffer shell shock, PTSD, delirium and panic attacks, just as you would expect under those conditions. The violence is also fairly visceral and realistic; the special effects team make use of both squibbing and CGI, so while those of you who may hate the look of CGI blood, there is still some squibbing effects that help highlight the realism of the gun battles.

Overall, it's a fascinating watch. Of course it's not as over-the-top and action-packed as T-34, but it is very similar to Kim Druzhinin and Andrey Shalopa's tightly hewn war-thriller, Panfilov's 28. Ignore the low rating, I'm not sure what's going on with that, but if you can find a way to view this film definitely give it a watch.

Some of the best I've seen in WWII movies.

A real gem, a feast for connoisseurs of the subject and a well-deserved tribute to the fallen Russians who gave their lives to stop the German advance into the USSR.