This Ukrainian production is very professionally done, and is a worthwhile watch. A handful of reinforcements (mostly in Ukraine's "volunteer battalions", as opposed to Regular Army toops) arrives at the shot-to-hell buildings of the Doneskt municipal airport in fall 2014, which is partially encircled by better-armed Donbas sepraratist militias and (unacknowledged by Moscow, of course) Russian Army soldiers.
Compared to many war movies I've seen, this one gets a lot of the little things right...how troops must contend with weariness, poor food, the recurring sense of not really knowing what the hell is going on, how casualties are handled, the fact that you DON'T fire your weapon full-auto unless it's absolutely last-ditch necessary, etc.
A couple minor gripes: while it's great that this film is dubbed in English (so no distracting subtitles), some of the accents and vocabularies are quite "American"...but that's not a show-stopper. Also, while there's one "commander" in charge of this immediate unit (which seems to be no more than a 12-14 men), there's no way such a small outfit would be holding the whole airport terminal, and there's no real sense of any "larger picture", organizationally.
The film has generally very good acting, and some surprisingly philosopical elements, as where the commander asks his troops why they volunteered to fight there...and another scene where he interrogates a captured enemy soldier and they exchange arguments about which side is more proper or reasonable in the political environment of the Ukrainian central govenrment versus the unhappy Russian-speaking Donbas Ukrainians.
All in all, a thoughful product that doesn't just fall back on Hollywood-style shoot-outs and pyrotechnics to keep your interest (although there's some significant violence depicted, too).
Compared to many war movies I've seen, this one gets a lot of the little things right...how troops must contend with weariness, poor food, the recurring sense of not really knowing what the hell is going on, how casualties are handled, the fact that you DON'T fire your weapon full-auto unless it's absolutely last-ditch necessary, etc.
A couple minor gripes: while it's great that this film is dubbed in English (so no distracting subtitles), some of the accents and vocabularies are quite "American"...but that's not a show-stopper. Also, while there's one "commander" in charge of this immediate unit (which seems to be no more than a 12-14 men), there's no way such a small outfit would be holding the whole airport terminal, and there's no real sense of any "larger picture", organizationally.
The film has generally very good acting, and some surprisingly philosopical elements, as where the commander asks his troops why they volunteered to fight there...and another scene where he interrogates a captured enemy soldier and they exchange arguments about which side is more proper or reasonable in the political environment of the Ukrainian central govenrment versus the unhappy Russian-speaking Donbas Ukrainians.
All in all, a thoughful product that doesn't just fall back on Hollywood-style shoot-outs and pyrotechnics to keep your interest (although there's some significant violence depicted, too).