Rating: B
Dir: Aleksey Sidorov
Star: Alexander Petrov, Irina Starshenbaum, Viktor Dobronravov, Vinzenz Kiefer
This is a nicely macho slab of war movie, featuring a pair of hellacious tank vs. tank battles on the Eastern front. We begin a few miles outside Moscow in 1941, as the Nazis advance on the capiral. New officer Junior Lieutenant Nikolay Ivushkin (Petrov) is given a thankless mission. Defend a village, with a single tank, against a whole platoon of German panzers under Klaus Jäger (Kiefer). Against the odds, Ivushkin prevails, though both men survive. Three years later, they meet again. Ivushkin is now a prisoner of war, and Jäger needs to assemble a team of Soviet tank operators, against whom Germans can train. He overcomes Ivushkin’s refusal by threatening to execute camp interpreter Anya (Starshenbaum).
Ivushkin, needless to say, has a plan. Break the T-34 training tank they’re given out of the practice grounds, and head for the hills. Problems: Jäger won’t give them live ammunition – he’s not stupid – severely limits their fuel, and lays mines around the training terrain. Nothing that Ivushkin and his crew can’t overcome, with a little help from Anya, who lifts a map showing a safe passage, in exchange for a passenger seat in the ttank. Of course, Jäger isn’t happy, and heads off in hot pursuit, though the wooded and mountainous terrain works in the escapees’ favour. But Ivushkin’s route to the mountain pass leading to safety, goes through a town, where Jäger and his tanks are lying in wait. It’s time for a rematch.
Sidorov sets his stall out early, grabbing the viewer’s attention with that opening battle. He drinks heavily from the Zack Snyder school of slo-mo action, though this helps clarify the specifics of the artillery strikes. On the other hand, the director also does a fine job of stretching out the tension, such as when two tanks are desperately trying to rotate their turrets onto each other, at point-blank range. While occasionally the CGI is about what you’d expect on a $10 million budget, most of the time it’s good enough. It helps that the characters are likeable, such as driver Vasilyonok (Dobronravov), who compares his skills to those of a ballet dancer, demonstrating them (top) while the theme from Swan Lake swells on the score.
Surprisingly, this is at least loosely based on a true story, previously made into 1965 film Zhavoronok (The Lark). Though in reality the rogue tank commander was captured and shot. Despite the historical setting, the Ukraine wasn’t happy, saying the film “openly justifies and promotes Moscow’s hostile foreign and security policy.” In the light of subsequent events, I can see their concerns. However, I’m going to take it purely at face value, as a well-crafted piece of action cinema, which doesn’t soft-pedal the horror of war (especially in the concentration camp, with its perpetually smoking chimneys…). I will say, the romance between Anya and Nikolay feels a little perfunctory, coming out of nowhere. Yet even with a chunky, 140-minute running time in the director’s cut, this rarely feels slack.