Letchik

Watching "The Pilot" was a pleasure, first because of the quality of the air combat scenes, very well filmed. Another highlight is the editing of the film, which streamlined a predictable story, but which catches our attention. I liked!!

This russian-made movie is also known as "The Pilot". It is not only excellently produced, but in my opinion also deserves to be more popular and have a better rating. It shows very well - like the movie "Into the White" - what a struggle it must be for a pilot that is shot down and stranded in enemy territory.

And yes - as is typical for many a russian-made movie - there is a tendency to make it a "hero movie", whereby a russian soldier performs the unthinkable. But honestly said, the 'heroics' were at an acceptable level (i.e. Not annoying), whereby the viewer gets to see some pretty good acting combined with quite impressive scenery, props, vehicles...

Overall, I deem this to be one of the better russian-made movies. As such, I score it at 6.9/10, which results in an IMDb rating of 7 stars.

The Pilot. A Battle for Survival is a tense, survival war drama that doesn't shy away from the horrors of battle. If there were another war film to which I would compare this, it would be Harald Zwart's 2017 Norwegian historical drama film, The 12th Man (Norwegian: Den 12. Mann). Both present a gritty survival at all cost and live to fight another day approach to the war genre.

The 105 min runtime felt much longer with the long dragged out and unnecessary scenes. The slow pacing made it even worse. There was very little suspense, or anything that would really make you care to invest watching it. The romance part was cheesy, and the survival part kinda lame. This would've been better off as a documentary, and no more than 60 minutes long. The performances were decent and mostly convincing, but the cinematography was the standout feature, as it was excellent. It's a very generous 6/10 from me.

First up, this movie was made long before the invasion of Ukraine and anyone who thinks this was made as propaganda for that invasion needs to stop with the delusional thinking.

As usual, this WWII movie is superbly made, with great cinematography and superb aerial effects. I really wasn't sure if they had real aircraft or CGI a lot of the time, that's how good the aerial scenes are.

The leads play their roles well and the story is quite inspiring, not dissimilar to the Douglas Bader story for the British in WWII.

Well worth a viewing. Watch the Russian audio with subtitles, not a dubbed version. Why anyone watches dubbed movies is a mystery!