Not Awful, But Very Weak And Pathetic

Rating: 2/10 (5 May 2017)

It seemed to be an excellent idea to make a WWII movie, set in Belarus in 1941-1945, showing the (in)famous Belski Brothers, who were Jews making their partisan camp and fighting against the oppressors. The problems stated immediately when I saw the casting. Don't get me wrong, Liev Screiber is a great choice, but Daniel Craig was clearly wrong. He is again a James Bond character, cool and defiant (Pun intended), but he lacks depth and is not convincing as a Jew. The rest of the casting is rather bland and bleak, so you will hardly remember anybody there. The second problem is the historic accuracy. I will not dwell onto details, but in reality that was not so simple as in the movie, as The Belskis fought not just Germans. The reality was much more convoluted, complicated and mixed. The third and really puzzling aspect is - why on earth do they speak a very weird mixture of typically simplified and wronged English and suddenly in Russia. I am Russian, and I was almost jumping on my chair hearing these sudden jumps from broken English to quite clean Russian. Liev speaks Russian better, by the way. Then the battle scenes - well, this shaky camera, these typical explosions, these bullets fatty zing-zanging onto soil - all of that is so ...wel.. Hollywood. The whole battle thing here is so hasty, kinky and wry that it leaves a feeling of utter disbelief. The overall impression - no, this is not your ultimate war movie. It leaves you cold and never lets the feeling of artificial setting go away. My rating - 2.