This my 2 cents just adding to what anybody else written.
I feel the movie is made just the way a teenagers war movie is expected to be. Something always saves the hero (or important character) in the last minute or even last breath (typical)! The bad guys have no chance, they drop like flies. So no more comment necessary I think, the movie is what you might expect plus a little childish.
No, no relationships or love story here.
Blod and gore, yes absolutely and it is funny too. When director wants to shock you some of the more important characters get hit perfectly in the center of the forehead, so it becomes a bit amusing.
Still it is an OK movie but nothing more. Have to add that some footage is very good.
The "big battle" is no big battle. The Swedish king Carl you learn nothing about, he is just someone on the other side of the battlefield. The best "big battle" which really oozes of realism/authenticity, is in the absolutely superb movie Gettysburg. The battle sequences in this movie are not important, not to the movies main story or as a "history class". No strategy is revealed.
So the movie is what it is and that is about the two Chivalliers from France sent to Russia as a punishment for dueling. This is how the movie starts off, and above I've written what the movie is not.
========= This has nothing to do with the review but, someone wondered about the Swedish voice-overs.
Voice 1: Halting severely, not a Swede. Used for the older characters.
Voice 2: Initially extremely good Swedish but then deteriorating so he is a foreigner.
Voice 3: Surely not a Swede, and I expect a German or a Russian very good a German and then trying to speak Swedish.
Voice 4: Finnish/Swedish. It is Swedish as spoken in Finland, could be the real deal here. Only that voice disappears and does not come back, only used once.
Voice 5: Perfect Swedish, actually it is an accent, take Stockholm with a radius of about 50-100 miles. He is used for the lowly enlisted infantry soldiers. Not a mistake all the way to his very last sentence which made me wonder. OK, so he might not be a Swede but surely have lived here, maybe as a student. I try give an example but in English: instead of saying "we need to withdraw from the battlefield" it sounded clearly as if he said "we need to withdraw from the bottlefield", unless of course that IS what they called it several hundred years ago and I don't know that.
Voice 6: Perfect Swedish, no accent, so its "standard Swedish", no mistakes, must be a Swede. Also used only for the soldiers.
------ Also remember Swedish army used men from several countries so if they don't speak perfect Swedish then that might very well be perfectly alright. This is if anybody care about stuff like that. The movie is OK.
