This film begins in 1942 on the Southern Front of the war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with a young Russian officer by the name of "Lieutenant Sergey Ogarkov" (Yuriy Borisov) assigned the position of a liaison between his army's headquarters and their separate divisions and brigades. As a result he is compelled to travel between commands delivering orders and receiving intelligence reports. However, at one particular location the area is overrun by enemy tanks and being armed with only a pistol he retreats like everyone else. What he doesn't know is that a new order has been issued which prevents retreat under the penalty of death and for that he is tried, convicted and sentenced to be shot. To do that, however, the sentence must be approved at higher headquarters and for that reason he is assigned a guard by the name of "Private Dzhurbaev" (Amir Abdykalov) to escort him there. Yet while Private Dzhurbaev is clearly mission oriented, the problem is that the Soviet Army is under constant attack and in such a mobile battlefield finding their higher headquarters is much more difficult than anybody realizes. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an interesting war film which contained an extremely rich view of World War 2 from the Soviet soldier's viewpoint. However, the main problem I had with this was the huge gap at the end which made it seem as if a whole segment of the film was erased. Additionally, the subtitles weren't very good but at least they were basic enough to understand the overall context. In short, other than the main problem just mentioned, I thought that this was a good film and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.
