This Russian silent film from I found in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I didn't know anything about the plot or what it would involve, but I was hoping it would worthy of its place in the book. Basically it is set in 1918, where Bair, the young and simple Mongol Huntsman, herdsman and trapper (Valéry Inkijinoff) is cheated out a valuable fox fur that he tries to sell to unscrupulous European capitalist fur trader Henry Hughes (Viktor Tsoppi). Bair gets into a brawl with the trader after cheating him, this brawl becomes much bigger with more people involved and he is ostracised from the trading post, so he is forced into escaping to the hills. By the year 1920, Bair becomes a Soviet partisan, and he becomes involved in the fight for the Soviets against the British army who are occupying the country. But Bair ends up captured by the British when they try to requisition cattle from the herdsmen at the same time as The British Commandant, commander of the occupation forces (I. Dedintsev) meets with a reincarnated Grand Lama (F. Ivanov). Bair is shot, the British army discover an amulet in his possession, examining it is suggested that he is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire. They find Bair still alive, and restore him to health and plan to use him, with his discovered heritage, as the head of a puppet regime, he is therefore thrust into prominence and placed in charge of the puppet government. By the end of the film however Bair as the puppet turns against his masters, who placed him in his position, in an outburst of fury, and a Mongol army is raised to clash against the British army, it ends at the point the two sides would strike each other. Also starring I. Inkizhinov as Bair's Father and Aleksandr Chistyakov as The Russian Rebel Leader - Commander of a partisan detachment. This film is very inaccurate according to history, the British army never occupied Mongolia, but the story of a simple fur trapper shunned away and then becoming like royalty is interesting, there are some great montage sequences with terrific editing, the costumes and detail of location are well done, and it is sweeping and action filled in some moments, I'm not sure I fully agree with five stars out of five by the critics, but it is a worthwhile classic silent drama film. Very good!
Review of Storm Over Asia
