I was looking forward to seeing 9TH COMPANY , a film that broke all records at the Russian box office and that caused veterans of the red army to leave the cinema in tears . With hindsight this sounds like the same reactions from 20 years earlier when veterans from the Vietnam war left American cinemas after watching PLATOON , FULL METAL JACKET and HAMBURGER HILL . The problem with his Russian equivalent is that it's perhaps too equivalent to the aforementoned films
Students of narratology and structuralism will instantly recognise the connections . We see the recruits turning up at basic training camp getting their heads shaved , we see a scene where the trained but green troops are given the low down on as to what motivates the enemy and the new troops see death as soon as they arrive at the airport . Couldn't screenwriter Yuriy Korotkov and director Fyodor Bondarchuk disguised these influences a little bit more ?
This is a failing . I was expecting a much darker film with an identity of its own . I remember seeing an HBO production called CITIZEN X which dealt with a serial killer during the Soviet communist era . CITIZEN X didn't really concern itself with being a serial killer murder mystery but had a subtext of how a dictatorship fails its people . I'm sorry to say this but if you took the characters from this red army unit changed their names and transplanted them to the jungles of South East Asia in the 1960s you'd be watching a very straight forward and generic war film that you've seen before
I can't claim to have seen battle but there's a couple of times when the mis en scene didn't ring true . Considering the Soviets had been in Afghanistan for 9 years and are led by battle hardened NCOs the company make fundamental operational mistakes like walking along a valley bunched up together . Also the climatic battle scenes seem to suffer badly from editing . The mujahedeen swarm over the lines Soviet line then it cuts to a dwindling band of survivors with all the Afghans no longer there . What happened to them ?
In effect 9TH COMPANY is by no means a bad film . It does have good production values and some bloody violence but it's not a film that will have you learning much about the success and failures of the ill fated Soviet military expedition to Afghanistan in the 1980s and I'm afraid I wa expecting more . One can't help thinking that in a few years we will see a breath taking movie set against soldiers battling Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan but will be an American film featuring NATO troops
Students of narratology and structuralism will instantly recognise the connections . We see the recruits turning up at basic training camp getting their heads shaved , we see a scene where the trained but green troops are given the low down on as to what motivates the enemy and the new troops see death as soon as they arrive at the airport . Couldn't screenwriter Yuriy Korotkov and director Fyodor Bondarchuk disguised these influences a little bit more ?
This is a failing . I was expecting a much darker film with an identity of its own . I remember seeing an HBO production called CITIZEN X which dealt with a serial killer during the Soviet communist era . CITIZEN X didn't really concern itself with being a serial killer murder mystery but had a subtext of how a dictatorship fails its people . I'm sorry to say this but if you took the characters from this red army unit changed their names and transplanted them to the jungles of South East Asia in the 1960s you'd be watching a very straight forward and generic war film that you've seen before
I can't claim to have seen battle but there's a couple of times when the mis en scene didn't ring true . Considering the Soviets had been in Afghanistan for 9 years and are led by battle hardened NCOs the company make fundamental operational mistakes like walking along a valley bunched up together . Also the climatic battle scenes seem to suffer badly from editing . The mujahedeen swarm over the lines Soviet line then it cuts to a dwindling band of survivors with all the Afghans no longer there . What happened to them ?
In effect 9TH COMPANY is by no means a bad film . It does have good production values and some bloody violence but it's not a film that will have you learning much about the success and failures of the ill fated Soviet military expedition to Afghanistan in the 1980s and I'm afraid I wa expecting more . One can't help thinking that in a few years we will see a breath taking movie set against soldiers battling Islamic fanatics in Afghanistan but will be an American film featuring NATO troops