The Pilot: A Battle for Survival

I believe this is based on a true story, and frankly the action sequences in the air reminded me of Dunkirk. The movie has it all and if you enjoy stories of survival, this one doesn't disappoint. Heroes are everywhere and here we have a pilot who goes the distance in fighting the good fight for his country. Man do we need more Nikolai Komlev's in the world. This isn't a propaganda movie, this is a movie! From my seat in the rear-gunner's, this is a movie that cuts to the chase and delivers the kabooms.

A refreshingly realistic WW2 shot film, right down to the Russian "Ilyusha" (Ilyushin Il-2) ground attack warplane. The acting throughout was superb.

The ending credits to so many actual Russian WW2 pilots is a sobering and tragic reality of War.

Lest We Forget.

This was made before the invasion of Ukraine, not propaganda, not made by or for Putin. Many Americans don't understand about Russia and WWII. They sustained horrendous losses, something like 20 million, compared to 400,000 for the US. A lot of it was fought in their own country after the Nazis invaded. As a result the war is more deeply embedded in the Russian psyche. US WW-2 movies are about soldiers doing brave things far from home. Russians were defending their own cities where they had homes, family and sweethearts. Pilots were the best of the best, and in the film he flies and Ilyushin-II, an armored close ground support aircraft. It was a great plane, an entirely Soviet design, and they were proud of it. It was ideal for the kind of fighting they were doing. The film shows it getting hit hard repeatedly before it came down, and this was realistic. It was a heavily armored, very tough plane.

It seems followed the book "The stroy of a real man" which was written by Boris Polevoy.after all math it is a nice movie where war,love and courage of a real man all are included.

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.