Krasnyy prizrak

I don't particularly like Tarantino. My husband does. It reminds you more of a spaghetti western as it goes on, as the music slightly changes to the western twang soundtrack of Clint Eastwood movies.

However.... I found some of the other criticism here unjustified. I didn't think the acting was that wooden. Nazi soldiers in rank aren't going to show much character. People freezing to death in the snow are likely to be a bit stiff-faced. The humour wasn't way out ridiculous slapstick humour (like Tarantibo's deadly Western saloon turning into a vampire den. Instead, it was little things which could actually happen. As for the translations being wrong...I speak German and didn't think they were incorrect. I thought the young soldiers forced to translate death and bodily harm threats were actually Paraphrasing intentionally to try to help and calm people. In fact, I found THEIR acting really great. With very little change in facial expression, only their eyes, they managed to convey their horror and grief at at atrocities they were required to do.

And give them credit, it looked awfully cold!

Last, there was a good twist or two in the film

I liked it. Much much better than the last couple films I've seen.

A fresh Russian take. No epic battles, even though there´s lot of action. Just smaller groups of people fighting for survival, which brings them close to the viewer. And this mysterious "ghost". Russian western/eastern with a mystery.

There was a Yugoslav movie "Valter defends Sarajevo" - the most watched movie in China - an eastern, where the question was "who is Valter?". People grew tired of epic battles. The Russians seems to have discovered it too.

Since 2015 "Stalingrad", with it´s CGI epic battles it´s not interesting anymore. Russian cinematography has become Hollywood, soulless.

This brings it back to the roots of real people´s destiny.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Second World War became the one and only unifying idea of the modern Russian society. Virtually everyone agrees that this war was a defensive and a fair one.

The Russian government lacking in it's own unifying ideas leans heavily ( i would say somewhat too heavily) on this background and tries to unite the Russian society based on the heroic war which ended 75 years ago.

Therefore there is a multitude of new movies about the War and that period, mostly these are well funded by the state and yet they are sadly lacking in anything original.

Now, the Red Ghost (Krasnyy Prozrak) is very different. It is a relatively small in scale movie, with a very fresh perspective.

It hails an unknown soldier, who fights for his home country without any hope for recognition. Without any hope for anything really other than killing as many enemies as possible.

It is an "eastern" and in many ways it is quite similar to 'westerns": there is silent lone hero, there is a clearly defined main antagonist and there is a final stand down between the two.

Even the music, while being original is quite vividly reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's immortal melodies.

Perhaps this is not a movie, which you would would want to see repeatedly, and it is not perfectly made. Most of the characters remain just illustrations of the archetypes they symbolize, such as, for example an old village hunter, a dying ranking officer, a talkative joker of a soldier and so on. We do not really get to know any of them.

But this may not necessarily be something of a shortcome - the nature of an eastern (and western) is always like that - ultimately the fight matters more than the characters.

In certain scenes the camera work may have been better. And yet the fight scenes are filmed really well, one does feel the tension of the fight happening on the screen.

The movie certainly manages to deliver it's message and it does so elegantly. There is an uplifting feeling after watching the film.

Highly recommended.

Right now Russians are not being looked upon favorably. It is more the Ukranians that most of the world sympathizes with - in this case you will be rooting for the Russians though, because this plays during the second world war. When Hitler and Nazi Germany tried to take over Russia amongst other countries.

Now this is fiction of course, but that is not a bad thing at all. It makes for good entertainment - if you don't mind the violence/gun fights that erupt. Of course it is clear who we are rooting for. I was surprised a bit that there is a lot of German talking in this, but it does make sense that Germans would talk in their native language to each other. It starts off with a bang, takes a bit of time to get going again, but when it does ... well it really does give you what you could hope for. Not a masterpiece, but a really well done movie in almost every respect (no pun intended)

I was quite impressed with every aspect of this production. I seen a number of Russian films and they do seem to insist on quality work. Artistic, realistic abilities are not short here. The plot is straight forward but the directing makes it so interesting, one yearns for the next scene, trying to anticipate upcoming action. Sets are real looking because there's no stage shooting, all on location. Props are as real as you can get but I'm sure someone can find a discrepancy. Wardrobe is accurate to the time and place as far as I can tell. But isn't that what the director wants? A believable story. One that just might be true?