In all post Soviet republics you can find bunch of veterans of the Soviet war affairs in Afghanistan. It is good that finally such movie was made. The previous movies about Soviet war in Afghanistan never managed to be so successful and therefore they didn't reached the masses. Bandarchuk's movie helps the youth as well as other people in the post Soviet republics to understand, what the veterans of the Afghanistan war have gone through. It is actually pity that I living in Latvia now more about what Americans have gone through in Vietnam then my neighbor in the upstairs apartment in Afghanistan. I believe that such thoughts could share with me many, who live in the post Soviet area.
The actors were well picked and they plaid well. The sound effects were cool and the music was fine. But still the movie was not perfect. There were some little things that didn't fit together. For example the plain that got shot with four engines on smoke and flaying at such a low altitude it would never be able to get back to the runway, besides if it even had, it would never crash in to gasoline cans, since on a battle airfield there are no open air storage for fuel. If they had then those Afghans would simply shoot at those cans instead of the plane. The last fight episode was not clear either. If Dzhakonda was sitting on the edge of a mountain, then how those Afghans could get to him without waking up anyone else? So the overall impression is that the movie was very good but not perfect.
