The Cold Summer of 1953

One of the best Soviet movies. A must see along with reading Solzhenitsyn's books.

A violent gang take over a small town where a train carrying gold is shortly due to pass through. The local lawman stands up to them but is killed. Everyone else is too frightened to resist, except for a couple of strangers who everyone else views with suspicion but who have a final shoot out with the gang and save the town.

Sounds familiar? Like a lot of other westerns? Yes, except that the town is in Siberia, the gang are criminals released in an amnesty (prison bosses took the opportunity to relieve themselves of the prisoners who caused the most trouble) and the strangers in town are political exiles from Moscow.

It's well executed and entertaining, even with subtitles. It proves that certain ideas cross cultural boundaries.

For thirty years, Joseph Stalin kept a tight grip on the Soviet Union, imprisoning and murdering millions. After he died, a number of people whom he had imprisoned got released. It turned out that among those were people who had committed violent crimes. Aleksandr Proshkin's "Kholodnoye leto pyatdesyat tretego" ("Cold Summer of 1953" in English) looks at the result of this. When a group of dangerous criminals takes over a rural village, a former political prisoner has to resort to extreme measures.

The movie got released during Mikhail Gorbachev's presidency. It was appropriate that in the period when criticism of its history became part of official Soviet policy, movies like this and "Little Vera" came out. They were finally willing to admit that they had been wrong about so many things. There could be no doubt that Stalin himself was the USSR's biggest criminal of all. Even Lavrentiy Beria, who freed a number of prisoners, organized the Soviet seizure of power in Eastern Europe.

I wouldn't call "Cold Summer of 1953" a masterpiece. At times it seems like an action movie. But it's a good look at this important part of Soviet history.

The movie is not bad, its a good movie which I give 7 points of 10. I must say that the movie is not from 1988, its from 1987. It was the last film of anatolij papanov, while the recording of this movie he died.Papanov is getting big in movie-business since the movie briljantnaja ruka(1969), he played there a criminal man with a special humor personality, It will even nowadays make a parody of his charakter by people like the music group'Krasnaya Plesen'. But 'holodnoje leto 53-go' shows that in the early days it was sometimes so that the real criminals, which killed and stealed people get out and people who were not criminals and made not much wrong had to working as a prisoner.

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Alright, listen. Some movies are entertaining. Some make you think. And then there are the rare ones that crawl under your skin and never leave. This is one of those.

No flashy effects. No cheap tricks. Just raw, unfiltered storytelling that hits like a freight train. Set in a world where survival and morality aren't just choices but a constant fight, this film doesn't tell you what to feel-it makes you live it.

The performances? Next-level. You don't just watch these characters-you breathe with them, fear with them, hope with them. The tension? It builds so naturally, so relentlessly, that before you know it, you're gripping the edge of your seat, completely lost in a world that feels dangerously real.

And that's what makes it great. It's not here to comfort you. It's here to challenge you, unsettle you, stay with you long after the credits roll. This isn't just a film-it's an experience.

One of the greatest ever made? No question.