This is a Soviet movie version of Jules Verne's "Un Capitaine de quinze ans" (A Captain of Fifteen Years). Actually, it's the second Russian movie version of that novel! In case you didn't know, the Soviet movie industry produced a lot of adaptations of non-Russian books, and French adventure epics like those of Jules Verne and Alexander Dumas were particularly popular.
I haven't read the original novel, but i have seen the older Russian black-and-white version and it is far better and entertaining. This version is very grim and violent - a lot of characters, good and bad, are killed in very vicious ways. This adds nothing to the plot, but eliminates the entertainment value completely. Maybe it is closer to the book, but i've got a hunch that it is not. Most probably, the producers were just enjoying the loosening of Soviet censorship and tried to make a American-like action movie. I guess that they imagined that a good action movie has to be scary and violent. Well, they were wrong. Scary it is - but unimaginably boring.
