The movie shows a few days in a life of a squad of Russian soldiers in a relatively quiet area of Chechnya. Apart from a lone sniper, nobody bothers the distant roadblock the soldiers are manning, and they even succeed to establish some sort of relationships with people of one of the local villages. The movie is very simple, and so is the acting. As someone has already mentioned, Aleksei Buldakov, playing the general, is probably the major casting mistake of this movie. I know people mentioned that this film is too predictable. However, I believe, that's it's power is in it's predictability. We know there is a sniper. We know the soldiers risk their lives daily to reach the roadblock and get back to the quarters. We know someone is going to die.We don't now who it is going to be, AND SO DON'T THE SOLDIERS. This gives the watcher an opportunity to feel what the soldiers feel day after day. The sniper is there. He is going to kill. Who will it be? Anyone, who has been in a situation even distantly related to this, will understand what it is all about. Another wonderful thing about this film, unlike many other recent Russian films I have seen, is that there is no right or wrong. Nothing is black or white. It's all covered by gray fog, and if there is no fog, it's all covered by smoke grenades. There are no heroes and no bad guys for a change. A solid 8/10.
Review of Blokpost
