5 Days of War

The open sequence is gut wrenchingly brilliant and raw, leaving you genuinely shocked. But as this scene fades into the next it appears the film changed director to one who watched to much A team and any 1960's World war II film.

For a film that purports to be a vision of real life events the director could not have got it more wrong. We are left with ridiculous battle scenes that are in fact an insult to the real horror of war on civilians. Hind gun ships firing bending missiles, the director loves this and we see these Hinds firing their bendy missiles all through out the film. Andy Garcia does his best Borat impression while the most shocking element of all is how much Val Kilmer has let himself go.

If you want to watch a brutal, raw and realistic film on the horrors of war, watch the first scene and then turn your TV off. If you want to watch some comic book propaganda film then keep on watching. A bad film that at the start hinted on how good it could have been!!

It's kind of unsettling reading some indignant reviews written in 2011 by people who described this movie as "shameful anti-Russian propaganda".

Fast forward to this wretched June 2022, after over 100 days of Russians waging war against Ukraine and you know that the Russians did everything showed in the movie and some more.

Apart from showing the aggressive, merciless attitude of the Russian and the tragic results, especially tragic when you hear the people interviewed at the end, the plot must necessarily focus on a small story, otherwise it would have been a documentary.

Rupert Friend is Thomas, the tough and silent war reporter caught in the Georgian-Russian conflict with his operator Sebastian and some locals, among which a pretty young girls named Tatia. Those who watched Homeland probably remember the attack launched by mistake against a group reunited for a wedding and here we have a re-run along the same lines that sets the plot in motion, which is perhaps not too wise.

Other defects of the script are the silly chess game between Thomas and a Russian commander and the usual evil and brutal antagonist bent on his personal revenge, which in the chaotic scenario of the movie seems very far fetched.

Apart from some over sentimental touch, the movie is more than ever a chilly reminder of disaster that may strike at any moment. Perhaps not the best war movie but realistic enough.

Well, all kinds of things went wrong with this movie.

For starters, the opening sequence is awesome. One thing this movie really had was best camera crew ever. Everything feels very intense all the times, very close to the real war footage. Also, all the props, vehicles, uniforms, even explosions look very real. This is the good part.

The mediocre part is main story. It's a mix of Hotel Rwanda and Tears of the Sun, but feels like a bootleg version, a cheap knockoff of those.

And then there's the bad part. Just after awesome intro, you get "treated" with shots of Tbilisi, with landmarks, people smiling, and god forbid, trancey music in the background. It looked like a commercial for some travel agency, with only "Visit Georgia" message missing from the scene and was most tasteless thing I've ever seen in a film. I live in similar post-soviet country and I do understand the mentality in desperate desire to explain your culture to the world to get less looked as some remote hellhole, but this is outright tasteless and maybe Georgia hasn't come to this yet.

The script had generally no direction. Awesome war scene here, some corpses there, cameramen and photography director knew what to do... But director didn't. First, that simple shot with church and bloody river from 'Tears of the Sun' gives 10 times stronger emotion than whole pile of bodies shown in '5 days of August'. Even though latter tries sooo hard to portray Russians as savages.

Second, despite awesome camera and props, fighting had no point in this movie. You see soldiers shooting stuff and each other, but it's unclear why or what's their plan. I don't think any people who had any idea about how soldiers and military works were on the set. Mi-24 choppers shooting random buildings with rockets? And here I thought that every pilot is given orders and targets to waste expensive munitions on... Also, MI-24 sports a deadly cannon, but it's used only once, missing everything, and soldiers act as chopper had blind men for pilot and gunner, not taking cover. Tanks constantly missing targets and not using machine guns? Taking down a chopper with a single LAW rocket? SU-bombers taking down a restaurant residing in basically nowhere? This all felt very bizarre and pointless.

I could go on, but there's no need. Let's just say that this movie is very average, has some good moments, lots of unmemorable moments, and some outright stupid ones. So pick it up from bargain bin, but don't expect too much.

6 stars I give are for 2 reasons: Awesome camera work (it felt like live action at places) and the fact that despite being incredibly dumb, this movie IS entertaining... and that's good, even if it's for all wrong reasons.

...as for amount of propaganda, this movie is 100% okay, considering what comes from Moscow. Sure it's all bloated and overrated but this is how we rock in those former USSR satellite countries. Even 50 of such movies can't counter a single evening news show from random Russian TV-channel. For westerners, you just have to accept that rules are different, but watching all those Normandy landings in every Hollywood movie and video game, maybe not as much as you might think.

but a primitive story is too much of one-sided pro-Georgian propaganda.

Good Georgians, bad Russians and nothing in the middle.

Well, AFAIK Georgian government sponsored production so it wasn't for free.

Don't try to learn the history of the conflict after that.

Cold War is back. Seems like Rembo from the 80s but lacks Silvester to save the day.

On the other hand it doesn't look like a typical B-movie it could be considering it's screenplay.

Director's work is good, acting is not too bad. Special effects is nice too excluding cheap gasoline explosions.

Worth watching anyway.

This film reminds me of Renny Harlin's breakthrough film from 1985, Born American. The scripts are lacking in both movies, but action sequences are well made and the propaganda aspects are similar. It's no secret that these films have a heavy anti-Soviet/Russian agenda, and actually as a Finn myself, I greatly enjoy that Harlin has the b*lls to p*ss of the Russians. His 1985 movie was especially gutsy considering that it was BANNED in Finland for a short while! (The government didn't want to endanger Soviet relations.)

So it's not a neutral movie, but it doesn't need to be. Somebody had to do it, and Harlin was the perfect man for the job. Russians have their own biased movies of this war, so a counterbalance was needed, and I'm sure "5 Days of War" beats the Russian movies by far in entertainment value, and will be seen by millions more.