User Reviews

It's the Chechen civil war against Russia -- one of them, anyway. There have been many over the centuries. Two Russian soldiers take a young Chechen fighter captive. One of the soldiers, Krikunov, decides not to pile his trophy captive in the truck with all the others but to take him on a two-day march to their base, across the rugged terrain of the North Caucasian mountains. A second, more practical, soldier, Logacheve, reluctantly accompanies his friend on the journey So two men and one hostile teen aged boy wind up schlepping through wind, rain, streams, forests, and glades for two days and one night.

The story isn't unique. There have been other films about soldiers taking prisoner and becoming humanized by getting to know their enemy. Just off hand, Cornel Wilde's "The Naked Prey" and Martin Ritt's "Five Branded Women." Usually the prisoner is a girl, so we get a bit more oomph out of the story. But this kid will do. He has long hair and his features look feminine and his delicate form looks weak.

It couldn't possibly have cost a lot of money to make. There are no CGIs, no battalions of extras, no set battles, and few special effects. We see three guys trudging through the mud and arguing. The sentiment is kept low key. Krikunov shows little affection for the boy, only going so far as to untie his hands and help him put on a pair of clean socks. Krikunov's somewhat dull companion makes occasional sarcastic remarks about may Krukunov should adopt the kid. But the growing feeling of protectiveness is there, although it's expressed in a cipher we must decode ourselves.

I'd be curious to see how an American audience would respond to a film about war between the Russians and the Chechens. I doubt it would make many people very happy. They'd have an avoidance/avoidance conflict. Many Americans appear to hate the Russians, never having forgotten or forgiven the Cold War. (Some are still getting over Germany for World War II.) Yet the Chechens can hardly be the heroes. There is a large population of Moslems in Chechen and we're not too fond of Moslems. Further, a few Chechen militants were involved in the seizure of a Russian school in Beslan in 2004, in which 384 hostages died, including 186 children. What to do, what to do? Who to hate, who to hate?

We follow the journey of two Russian soldiers on their way to Chechnya where a Russian convoy has been ambushed. They take a young Chechen captive to show them the way.

The film was very confusing at first, especially if (like me) you have not done any prior research on the global trope of the film. But it ultimately does get to a point where you understand what is happening and from that point on the action just stales.

It is a war film with not a single battle scene, for the most part of the film we are just watching the two Russian soldiers and their prisoner trekking through the forrest. It would not have been a problem if the character development made up for the lack of action but it did not. I expected a lot more development but all three of the characters just stayed pretty much the same throughout the entirety of the film. Although we do see them getting more used to being with each other, the movie ends right at the beginning of that "development". I would not go as far as to say that the film should have been extended to actually let enough time for relationship and character development because with how passive it was the film already felt like it was dragging on.

Ultimately it was not a bad movie, it was just lacking basically any kind of action and also pretty pointless as the characters did not make any impact and right from the start of their "rescue mission" you could feel that they were never going to accomplish anything. The way they never gave up even though they were clearly set on a game they could not win was very confusing. But it was different from the usual war film and some of the shots were remarkably great.