Krasnyy prizrak

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Second World War became the one and only unifying idea of the modern Russian society. Virtually everyone agrees that this war was a defensive and a fair one.

The Russian government lacking in it's own unifying ideas leans heavily ( i would say somewhat too heavily) on this background and tries to unite the Russian society based on the heroic war which ended 75 years ago.

Therefore there is a multitude of new movies about the War and that period, mostly these are well funded by the state and yet they are sadly lacking in anything original.

Now, the Red Ghost (Krasnyy Prozrak) is very different. It is a relatively small in scale movie, with a very fresh perspective.

It hails an unknown soldier, who fights for his home country without any hope for recognition. Without any hope for anything really other than killing as many enemies as possible.

It is an "eastern" and in many ways it is quite similar to 'westerns": there is silent lone hero, there is a clearly defined main antagonist and there is a final stand down between the two.

Even the music, while being original is quite vividly reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's immortal melodies.

Perhaps this is not a movie, which you would would want to see repeatedly, and it is not perfectly made. Most of the characters remain just illustrations of the archetypes they symbolize, such as, for example an old village hunter, a dying ranking officer, a talkative joker of a soldier and so on. We do not really get to know any of them.

But this may not necessarily be something of a shortcome - the nature of an eastern (and western) is always like that - ultimately the fight matters more than the characters.

In certain scenes the camera work may have been better. And yet the fight scenes are filmed really well, one does feel the tension of the fight happening on the screen.

The movie certainly manages to deliver it's message and it does so elegantly. There is an uplifting feeling after watching the film.

Highly recommended.

A fresh Russian take. No epic battles, even though there´s lot of action. Just smaller groups of people fighting for survival, which brings them close to the viewer. And this mysterious "ghost". Russian western/eastern with a mystery.

There was a Yugoslav movie "Valter defends Sarajevo" - the most watched movie in China - an eastern, where the question was "who is Valter?". People grew tired of epic battles. The Russians seems to have discovered it too.

Since 2015 "Stalingrad", with it´s CGI epic battles it´s not interesting anymore. Russian cinematography has become Hollywood, soulless.

This brings it back to the roots of real people´s destiny.

Goofy and aloof with some moments of humor, spaghetti western themed WORLD WAR 2 movie, a Fresh look with how the Nazi's and the Russian dealt with one another in war, loved the action sequences in this film, it had a go for broke attitude with the violence near the conclusion which helped this movie a lot in my opinion, the Red Ghost was a badass when he shows up, but the Russian villagers who were stuck on the farm stole the movie, yes it borrows from previous films, yes it's a little too modern with the dialog, but that not a bad thing, if you can find this film, and have free time to watch an international action film, this one is not bad.

Obviously director of this movie is a very big admirer of Tarantino's late creative work.

Right now Russians are not being looked upon favorably. It is more the Ukranians that most of the world sympathizes with - in this case you will be rooting for the Russians though, because this plays during the second world war. When Hitler and Nazi Germany tried to take over Russia amongst other countries.

Now this is fiction of course, but that is not a bad thing at all. It makes for good entertainment - if you don't mind the violence/gun fights that erupt. Of course it is clear who we are rooting for. I was surprised a bit that there is a lot of German talking in this, but it does make sense that Germans would talk in their native language to each other. It starts off with a bang, takes a bit of time to get going again, but when it does ... well it really does give you what you could hope for. Not a masterpiece, but a really well done movie in almost every respect (no pun intended)