Os Vinte e Oito Heróis

This film is beautifully shot. That makes up for the fact that the pacing, dialogue, and most other aspects of a good movie aren't really there. I seriously had to skip over whole conversations because the first half of the movie is full of irrelevant and gratuitous dialogue. There's also way too many characters and it's almost impossible to keep track of everyone.

The battle scene was nicely done, but I had no real emotional involvement in the characters because of the aforementioned issues. Had they focused in on one or two key individuals it could have been much more effective.

Also, the English voice acting wasn't bad.

A very strong film made with great respect to our ancestors who fought for life, for people, for Motherland. It is about simple people who contribute themselves to collective - and as positive feedback it helps them find right motivation, do better than they could and become real heroes. This film is about Heroes who faced the most horrific human evil and crushed it with their will. My great-fathers and great-mothers too stood before fascists and stopped them before Moscow. I feel no shame before them for this film, for it is truly brilliant. I wish all modern films about the Great Patriotic War were made with such soul, love and attention to details.

My thanks to all who created the film and to all who helped!

I usually prefer to talk about the a film, what's on the screen and not about what's going and what's being said around it, but I'll make a slight exception.

Russia churns out a lot of war films and a lot of films with patriotism as the key (sometimes only) ingredient. There is an understandable fatigue of these films (just like some are tired of comic book or superhero films) so people are now giving low scores to any war film, regardless of its merits.

Russia also has a lot of people that love to see Russian films fail. Russia produces a lot of trash and cash-grab (popsa) films so you have people that call everything that comes from Russia as popsa and want to see it fail.

No, this film is not a box office failure nor a financial failure. Yes, the budget is underreported, (which is strange considering people want to see bigger budget films) but it seems to have made its money back already. One cannot compare it to American films with bigger budgets, star power, the advantage of English, etc.

Without going into spoilers, this film is about a battle, or series of battles, between a Nazi Germany Panzer division and Soviet (Russian and Kazakh) defensive positions. If you want a love story, you've come to the wrong place. If you want a superhero, you've come to the wrong place. Rambo doing it all by himself, taking down the Wehrmacht and killing Hitler himself? Wrong place.

This film has been de-Sovietized, reducing references to Stalin, red flags, Marxism, Communism, etc. People seem to take issue with that and feel that this point makes this film a 1/10 film.

The fact is defending a trench is defending a trench. It makes no difference if one does it for the union of republics (USSR) or for a particular republic (RSFSR). In this case, the soldiers were defending (the road to) Moscow and it was not inaccurate that they were defending Russia. Yugoslav WW2 films also have people talking about taking/defending particular regions (Slavonia, Vojvodina, Kosovo, Serbia, etc.) and that does not necessarily mean they denied the existence of Yugoslavia.

Not that this film has not been de-Sovietized. It has, but it's not such a big deal. People still referred to each other as comrade, and yes, there were not a lot of flags and hammer-and- sickle stuff, but this was an undersupplied unit, lacking both men, guns, ammo and supplies.

The production values are quite high and this film lacks the TV-cheesiness of many Russian films and shows.

The Russians are not presented as good people, nor are the Nazis presented as evil. There is no need for that. We know who's who. This was like two boxers in the ring - "this is where we are now. Let's settle this."

It's dark, without being gloomy and depressing. It's violent without being disgusting.

It has professional acting, professional camera work, professional lighting, sound and CGI.

The script is not very deep because this is a film about men defending a trench. It sets out to do one thing and does it very, very well.

8/10.

This film is about ordinary heroes and simple feat. It ordinary people protect what they hold dear, in the main it the memory of ancestors, whose feat gave us life.

Many talk about the doubts about the feat, talk about the propaganda that that there is no talking teapots and assistants of the protagonist, and no hysterical howls of frightened people here warriors, soldiers came to protect your home. People have taken the path of the world's evil and safely carry out their work in the face of true death.

In conclusion to quote one of the characters: Now all the heroes, because the time is.

As the first ever crowd-funded movie it came out amazing. The story about men who stood up for their country is not new in cinematography. But the way it was presented in this movie is very special. It's at the same time very simple and keeps you emotionally tense till the very end. The story about men who had to put on the table even more than they had. Who knew that they will die and most likely still won't stop the enemy but still did their best. Main characters are played by the actors of different nationalities that corresponds to the reality of the WWII, when the whole world stepped into a fight. Filming crew did an amazing work on battle action and special effects. This movie really touches the soul.