Svolochi

Recently I have noticed that the Russians began to make very good movies – and Svolochi is for sure one of them. The action is really moving – while the viewer has a choice - to sympathize with the young criminals who seemed doomed to die or to look at them from a different perspective. Some of the boys were caught for committing crimes such as murders and they were given a chance between death and training in a military preparing them for risky missions behind the enemy lines. The movie does not do very good on the realistic scale but still seeing it is worth it as it has some quite emotional moments and the acting was pretty decent.

In "socialist" times Russian films were always and everywhere, with very few Western films shown, thus, in recent decades, I have not felt any particular urge to (re)watch Russian films, especially post-Soviet ones. But we all have our weaknesses and curiosities :) plus incidents happen...

Svolochi is meant to be a historical film, about WWII in the rear area far away from actual battles (somewhere in Kazakshtan), but it has turned out that it is all pure fiction - presented not very convincingly, with the exception of Russian crime scene and obscene language perhaps (not accurately translated into English). Reactions to the boys' behaviour and language by military personnel are odd, if not more, and adult military characters are atypical to the Stalin era - they seem hesitant, weak, speaking mostly gently, and the actors performing them are not front-rank... The ending dating back to 1943 is hectic and airy-fairy, and the very ending is quite ridiculous, taking into account modern opportunities in finding former acquaintances.

The film is "saved" by two good performances - Alexander Golovin as Kot and Sergey Rychakov as Tjapa; they squeeze the best/most out of this inconsistent story and focusing on their chemistry enables to wend your way through this 1.5 hour film without wtf! attitudes. But still, Svolochi is not a film you definitely must see, particularly if you have some knowledge of Russian values and language.

Foreigners might not know but in Russia the movie was at first promoted as "absolutely true story" which the author of the book survived himself. Thats why the attention to it was so great (to say nothing of the persistent advertising).

And then it turned out, quite all of a sudden, it was just the author's fantasy, it's not true, no kids were made terminators in the soviet time and sent to Nazis to heroically die. and there are even documents proving that is what Nazis tried to do!

The trick as you may have understood is soooo bad! To draw attention at any price? To rewrite history blaming soviet people for what they had never done? OK, we are grownups, we can just ignore the movie or its historical part, but what to do with kids who watched it... Alongside with the ongoing brainwashing how bad everything was at the soviet time. Making them ashamed for the past?

If our ministry of culture thinks suitable to sponsor such movies, i don't know what for culture they have there.

Apart from the history, the producers did everything to get tears out of us - poor kids in so hard conditions: hard life made them criminals (ah so) cruel power makes them kamikaze (oh really). such a fake. Would you watch this movie if characters were not that young?

And big thanks to Menshov, the producer of "Moscow doesn't believe in tears", a good movie made in the soviet time, for his refusing to give the award to Svolochi at some MTV ceremony. That was unbelievable and wonderful!

And today it's Victory Day in Russia and i would like to say thanks to all the people who saved the world from Nazis, who were dying for the better future for us. we will never forget that! We are immensely grateful!

I watched the film having in mind well known facts how Stalin and his commanders treated people and soldiers in particular. What seems unbelievable to reviewers, i.e. the option granted to the kids by the government: "go on to get killed or we shall kill you", was in fact a common practice in the Soviet Army (and in the political system as the whole) KGB troops that followed soldiers on the battle field during hopeless attacks, only to kill each soldier who would try to withdraw, go slower than ordered, dodge the bullets etc. (and soldiers were aware of that!) was a regular scenario of many, then famous, battles for which Stalin's generals were decorated with kilograms of medals! In this film the difference lies only in that the "choice" was given to kids rather than to men who were forced to serve in the army, after all. Of course, I am talking about the core of the situation portrayed in the film and not arguing that whole plot from start to end is in each detail totally believable.

I am surprised to find so many reviewers who firmly state that the Soviets could not use children in this way. From the military point of view it is not necessarily unbelievable: just study the history of antifascist underground armies in Poland and elsewhere, where kids (with their innocent look and presumable lack of skills) occurred clever enough to vitally help many sabotage actions, and you'll find how naive some presumptions presented here may occur.

I am perplexed to read that the Stalin's regime was not that bad as it may seem based on this movie. Gulags, KGB secret actions, great starvation of the 30s that took 30 mln lives only to silent and eliminate a population of people who were resisting the regime and were not submissive enough to allow Stalin to get them deprived of their own land (farms) and many more facts are unknown, have been forgotten or are we witnessing a kind of common amnesia? A concept much more believable to me would be that the whole advertising noise about the movie was well scheduled only to invoke a "reverse reaction", i.e. "public" claim in Russia and particularly in the free world that "Stalin was not that bad". Too twisted or too clever? No, oppressive regimes have always been more clever than systems based on civilized standards. I hope we'll not be forced to try and experience whether this statement is true or not.

As a former tutor in a correction house for juvenile criminals I find the movie psychologically very believable. I liked that the film showed a human dimension of people in a totally inhuman world. Professional features of the movie did not, in my opinion, give raise to any serious criticism and I found some scenes done perfectly. It's definitely not a movie for people whose perception was shaped and is embedded in today's Hollywood standards. Thanks for your attention and patience (if any) to read my review until the last dot.

I was surprised by the quality of this film. Sure, the ending was hyped, but just look at American films. (Boys on bicycles flying past the moon?) Why can't foreign films use a little hype now and then. Nobody seems to claim this is a true story, and it isn't. It is a boys' fantasy. Perhaps a bit too much blood and gore to get a PG rating, but part from a few swear words (Mother who?) well I've seen worse. Quite a few kids are killed and suffer violence, Not much worse than "Goblet of Fire" really, but I think, if anything, they pulled their punches in the training scenes. Real kids commando training is very much rougher than they showed. I'd be happy for teens over the age of fifteen to watch it. The film deals with the subjects of attitudes to boys, boy bashing, and the use of child soldiers. It also has a lot of moral issues that can be discussed. On the whole, I'd like to see a film with English dubbing. it would be worth it. Well done, guys. The kids acted well, too.