Please don't watch

gregrushin

To say this movie has no idea what it's doing is an understatement. This film is baffling. I understand it's not a Hollywood movie. I understand it's not bound by those norms. But by god. This movie jumps around more than my most unstable relationship. At no point did I realize who the main characters were, what anyone's goals were, who we were supposed to be rooting for and why this movie was so shoddy! I mean, start at bad audio dubbing, finish with the most random cuts happening every two seconds! I'm not joking this movie gets laughable. 1.5 million people died. How do you make that funny. I'll tell you how, you have: -obvious stage lights -horrific acting and accents -no sort of consideration or placement of scenes -bad dubbing -no build up -no plot or theme focus -ridiculous scenes, such as one where what we think (we don't know) is the main character walking after someone in despair, and they literally just walk into a mound of ice and pretend to trip... Oh and the siege of Leningrad, yeah that's about 30 people who slowly run towards each other.

And, the only reason we know this famine is getting worse is because we see the town's announcer every few minutes and every time we see him he's coughing a little more and he's wearing an extra item of clothing!

OK, so maybe it did get the costumes and the sets right, sure, but that's the thing! Most people will just give this movie a pass because its set in World War Two! It's just a bit insulting that some Russian filmmakers will go and try their hand at history and a Hollywood war movie now they've got a budget and just fail so badly filmmaking-wise!

Please, if you watch this don't expect it to be some interesting foreign period piece.

score 2/10

gregrushin 5 March 2017

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3654130/