Belyy tigr

Starts out as a perfectly good war flick and turns more and more surreal during the last thirty minutes. Or maybe I should say, it becomes a meditation over the meaning, the spirit, the essence of war. As a whole, White Tiger is like an episode of Twilight Zone filmed in the gritty philosophical manner of Tarkovsky - some faces and scenes almost appear like a nod to the protagonists of Stalker. It probably won't please those who watch this for the war part, and because marketed as a war movie, it probably fails to reach out those looking for the surreal and mystical. However, even if this film is an odd bag, it has the potential to leave a lasting impression on the viewer because the point it makes in the end (in the fireplace monologue scene) is utterly taboo-breaking with thoughts no Western-made WW2 films dared to express. 8/10 for a few sluggish scenes towards the end.

I very rarely get so scared watching a movie that I have trouble watching it. The depiction of all the gritty details of tank culture was superb. Every moment, every mundane scene had a heavy tension to it -- you never knew what was going to happen next.

The best thriller movies make good use of silence rather than cheesy background music, and this had those silent scenes. The story was kind of like Moby Dick transposed into the WW2 eastern front -- replace the great white whale with White Tiger and Captain Ahab with the mysterious tank commander. Be warned, the movie has a lot of burn victims depicted very realistically.

First things first - if you expect a "standard" war film like Saving Private Ryan or Enemy at the Gates or Fury, then this is the wrong place to look. White Tiger is a Russian film set in the dying days of WW2. The titular AFV is a lone German tank which appears mysteriously on the battlefield and destroys Russian tanks by the dozen, whilst seeming invincible. No crew is ever seen, with the result that it feels like a mash-up between the great white whale from Moby Dick and the homicidal tanker in Spielberg's Duel.

Hunting the tank is a character halfway between Captain Ahab and Ishmael; a Russian tank-man who makes a miraculous recovery from seemingly fatal burns, only to find that he has total amnesia. He only knows that he can talk to the souls of tanks, and that he must hunt the white tiger.

Sounds odd? That's the point. The film is heavy on metaphor and mysticism, and in the latter third becomes deeply surreal. There's a scene of three German generals signing the document of surrender, then enjoying a strange meal. Then cut to a line of German PoWs; then to Ahab/Ishmael alone in a field with his tank. The white tiger hasn't gone, he says. It's merely hiding, and will be back in a hundred years or so. Then the final scene: is it real? Is it symbolic? Is it happening in someone's head? You decide.

This is a cerebral film. It asks questions, and leaves the viewer to struggle for answers.

In Russian, with subtitles.

'White Tiger' is not your usual war movie concentrating on heroes or horrors of war. It is a rather allegorical tale about the essence of war. I have to say I guess that I went into the movie with the wrong mindset - horror fantasy about tank commander who must face the undestroyable and mysterious enemy tank. As a genre, war and horror don't mix very well, yet I decided to watch this peculiarity. The film was presented as an action-packed horror epic, and so I went into this. The movie starts with a scene that depicts the aftermath of the tank battle where they recover a tank commander who has lost his memory but not his remarkable skills. From there on the film takes sudden turn into the territories of surrealism and mysticism. That itself is never a bad thing, but. . . It quickly became obvious where the director was going with this thing, and although, I did reset my mind very quickly, the film didn't work for me wholly. It felt kind of bland and sterile. Some parts didn't quite add up or match. It wasn't polished enough for war epic neither it wasn't 'artsy' enough to work as allegory. The pacing wasn't off, and there were some brilliantly directed scenes, especially the final standoff. And the appearing of the White Tiger from the mist nearly gave me goosebumps.

Quite an interesting movie with a thought-provoking concept. At least I thought about this movie afterward. If You happen to read this review before watching 'White Tiger' then I recommend you keep the open mind and not expect some usual war hero action epic. That might help. On the other hand, if the movie is truly great, it should catch your attention anyway no matter how prepared you are or in what mood you are.

I might give this movie another shot, although I got a general idea, the execution wasn't anything special. Yet, I can't call this movie either a boring or total waste of time.

It's good film but my expectations were much more. I don't like in this movie artificial pressurization of evil. This story not seems to me realistic, though filmed well and with grand scale. Here is many tanks, charismatic actors, atmosphere of war, but no desired voltage. Clearly that creators have tried to scaring viewer with talk about mystical tank "White Tiger" but in fact tank on a screen looks not so shattering as its fame. Why this tank was such terrifying, such invulnerable? What is his power? Is it ghost or not? I very love films by Karen Shakhnazarov but his new film asks too many questions and can't give any answers, because, in my opinion, creators don't know theirs too, and just had shifted this mission on viewer. "White Tiger" is good story with an excellent idea and look in any case its will be useful and interesting.