One thing I love about recent Russian (or should one say Soviet again soon?
) productions is that they are pretty accurate equipment wise and I was positively surprised that the Germans actually spoke normal German (except the one or two odd ones).
What I don't like about recent Russian productions is that they took a couple of the worst traits of bad film-making.
1) Over-dramatising
everything.
2) Too much usage of Children and Women to dramatise even further, beyond infinity.
3) Still remaining with the old Soviet style propaganda film.
4) Pure black&white portrayal.
5) Raping history/movies/books/dreams by trying to alter them to fit the director's vision of a crappy movie.
6) THIS IS SPARTAAAA!!!
I skipped straight to the fighting scenes because after one minute I grew tired of women and children getting blown to pieces for nearly 10 minutes. Cutting that part down to 2 minutes with a one or two women and children getting blown up gets the point across just fine, no need to take a sledgehammer and try to punch it into me. You see, getting a point across more subtle is
always better, making me watch this splosion fest for that long just stresses my eyes and causes acute weariness of the "evil, evil Germans" organ, ultimately resulting in organ failure and need for a transplant... but more on that later.
Once past the bombardment the Germans pretty much committed every war-crime possible, again it's done in such a ridiculous amount that it just gets annoying and boring. Yes, yes, I get it, Germans are evil, now please stop making the poor actors jump on top of each other at the end of a tunnel. I hate children, why is this film filled with them? They serve no purpose what-so-ever, apart from underlining the statement of all Soviets either being innocent, nice little children (who unfortunately have the habit of getting blown to small pieces); scared, worried, beautiful and innocent women (who unfortunately have the habit of getting blown to somewhat larger pieces); or loving, caring men that only want to protect their family. Unfortunately (or should I say "gladly"?), my "evil, evil Germans" organ failed half way through all this crap, resulting in all guilt and shock immediately bouncing off my mental shield, resulting in a true "LOL" reaction.
THIS IS BREEEEST!!!
This is so absolutely ridiculous that I simply refuse to comment it, but the rest of the battle-scenes were actually quite ok (anything that doesn't involves people charging whilst screaming "SPART- erm, I mean BREEEEEST!"), again outstanding equipment used, The Pz.III looked pretty good and the 45mm M1937 PAK was the first gun in a film I remember being loaded. The end was 100% clich
