bjorn5

Unless you have a thing for Soviet armor, I would say that you should give this movie a miss. It's supposed to be about the second battle of Rostov in July 1942, but it looks like it's been shot in the same muddy field in northern Russia. The makers might have heard about tactics, but if they have, they have promptly forgotten almost everything. Tank vs tank combat is often within spitting distance, and the Germans appear to be dropouts from the Imperial Stormtrooper Academy of Shooting. Meanwhile, the Soviets hit with almost every round, and every hit is a penetrating killshot. The German tanks must have cardboard armor, though, as in one scene, a tank is knocked out by two hand grenades tossed at it. While the "star" is a KV-1 tank (a rare bird in war movies), most other tanks are T-34/85, which weren't used until a year and a half later. All German tanks are supposed to be PzKpfw IV ausf. F2, but that tank was quite rare by that time. It's more likely that the real battle involved short-barreled PzKpfw IV's and IIIs with the 5 cm gun. The German tanks all sport side armor skirts (Schürzen), which were introduced in early 1943. They are probably there to hide the fact that the tanks are converted T-55s. The Soviets are a motley crew of comrades, and only the political commissar is a bit slimy. The acting is OK, but a few actors stand out as pretty wooden. There's never really any real suspense, as the tank crew (while suffering losses) manage to defeat almost every German tank, even when the enemy assault with an entire company. The script has a love story of sorts, which appears to be there just to make girlfriends endure this rather mediocre 90-minute movie.