Corvo Branco

The intro claims this movie is based on a true story, but I have no idea to what extent. That said, it's a pretty well-made movie. It was made in 2021, well before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and is based around the 2014 annexation of the Crimea by Russia.

The main protagonist, the titular Raven, played by Aldoshyn Pavlo, does a very good job of portraying the impact of such conflict, with transition from pacifist to war hero. The other really good performance is from Andrey Mostrenko, who plays Raven's commanding officer.

The sniper scenes are well shot and credible. The sound effects are on point too.

The movie paints a bleak picture of war and there's nothing glitzy and shiny about it. Men killing men in bleak conditions.

Well worth watching.

Snipers shooting foreign invaders trying to steal their country throughout the movie.

Loved every moment of the movie 9/10. I truly Hope for a part 2 coming out soon.

Pavlo Aldoshyn gives a convincing performance as a Ukrainian sniper in their war with Russia. After a overly sweet ten minutes or so of little house on the prairie, the film gets down to brass tacks as we follow Pavlo's character going from Michael Langdon to Arnold Schwarzenegger. He learns to be a sniper to get revenge on the Russians. The training segment is interesting.

Although the Ukrainians have inferior tech for scope rifles, they get the job done most of time due to their discipline and controlled hatred of the invader. Some of the segments of the Russians getting drilled are quite satisfying. Worth viewing.

Starts out bizarrely, a teacher and his wife are living the ultimate hippy lifestyle off the grid, maybe this is more prevalent than I've been exposed to, but for the movie, it just seems weird and pointless.

The news reports on them for a sensation piece presumably, but doesn't immediately follow up after his wife is killed..... odd.

It's a great motive for joining a military, but he simply doesn't fit in, and the training, if you want to call it that, is on par with kids playing, but with real guns.

There is literally 2 training scenes on the range, and we're off to fight the war.... except hero boy doesn't bother to listen to his commander, because he's got a good shot on 2 random fighters. Never mind that the commander knows why they're out there, looking for the enemy snipers, but nope, blown away because hero boy couldn't keep his round in his rifle.

Jump to our hero immediately somehow being the go to guy for sniping.... and now he's of course refilling his own ammunition and everything..... So either the pacing of the movie is terrible, and a fair amount of time has passed without any indication of such, or it's just a terrible script.

I'm suspecting it's the latter, since randomly hero boy who didn't seem to get along with his 5 classmates (though he also didn't seem to not get along with them either, there was next to zero emotions showed either way). When two of them went on a mission, off screen and unbeknownst to the viewers, he starts asking about them multiple times, awkwardly. Only for one of them to be dead of course. But wait.... here comes more lack of any emotion...

It ended quite predictably, not a bad thing, but also not riveting.

For the life of me I cannot figure out why they were constantly loading their first round by hand, when the rifles were all magazine fed, unless it's for that one extra round of capacity, than that's fine, but other than that, it makes no sense to do it. I've served in the Canadian military and fired an assortment of weapons, semi auto, full auto, belt fed, mag fed. Never any sniper rifles, so maybe snipers do have a reason for it, just seems unlikely though, and that it was added by someone unfamiliar with weapons.

Oh and to say it's a political statement or propaganda movie, meh, almost every movie is to some extent, even children's cartoons, this one just happens to be a current issue one. It doesn't even detract from the movie.

Ignore the negative hit pieces reviews that are clearly political coloured.

IMHO and simply taking this as a straightforward movie without any political consideration, it does it's job really well. None of the emotionally fraught moments of the journey are over dramatized. Nothing is swelled on so there is a constant sense of progression yet nothing is rushed. Attention to detail is good and the acting and cinematography are both strong.

If you like war films and particularly ones with a Sniper focus or element, and you do not have strong political views over Ukraine vs Russia I think you will thoroughly enjoy this film.