If you've seen Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain you won't feel very compelled to see this, but you should. The main premise is quite similar: two lovers in an extremely homophobic environment form a bubble where their love can thrive through stealing time from their own ordinary obligtions to keep their love alive. The context is slightly different, since we're dealing with a Cold-War airforce in Russia where homosexuality is punishable by prison. The two male leads are conving and attractive, with erotic scenes on the right side of tasteful. As usual, epilogues in these sorts of stories tend to be predictable, but as with everything else, it's the road that matters, not the goal. Also, the fact that it's based on a true story lends it some more weight to keep it from turning into an amalgam of Titanic and Brokeback Mountain.
Review of Firebird
