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Russian World War II

Ballad of a Soldier begins on a small, dirt road where many chickens and several small girls run about clucking and playing. A woman who is dressed in black approaches us from the distance. As she fills the screen, a couple enters the frame carrying a baby and attempts to make conversation. The woman {Antonina Maksimova} walks past, simply ignoring them. The couple turns to face the camera and the young mother sports a concerned look on her face as she watches the woman in black walk away. We follow the woman down the road while the narrator explains that her son, Alyosha, won't be returning from the war. From a close-up of the mother's face, we dissolve to the scene of a battle.

In a trench, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, "Finch" {Alyosha {Vladimir Ivashov}} calls to "Eagle" on a field phone and tells him what the situation is up here on the front lines. Alyosha's a little frantic seeing as there is a tank headed in his direction and he looks to be just about the last person left alive. Just as things are getting really stressful, he picks up his weapon and field phone and manages to stay just a few steps ahead of a tank as he runs for his life. As he's about to fall over from exhaustion, Alyosha stops and rolls onto the ground where he realizes he's rolled right up next to a small anti-tank gun. Thinking quickly and scared out of his wits, Alyosha destroys the tank that was following him with one well placed shot, then takes out a second that just happened to be following close behind.

Next thing you know, Alyosha's in front of the General {Nikolai Kryuchkov}, telling the story of the battle with the two tanks. The General begins to write him up for a decoration but Alyosha interrupts and asks if he could simply have a day to go home to fix his mother's leaking roof. After messing with the "kid" for a while, the General gives him six days and Alyosha sprints out the door in a state of what might best be described as military bliss. Cut to a jeep as it rolls between row upon row of soldiers and makes its way over the war torn countryside back to Georgiyevsk. Along the way, a man stops our hero and gives him the last of his squad's soap to take back to his wife as a present.

Cut to Alyosha as he runs to catch a train back home. At a station where Alyosha switches trains, he meets a man, named Vasya {Yevgeni Urbansky}, that's afraid to go back to his wife. He's afraid that she'll no longer love him now that he's lost a leg. When the woman behind the ticket counter screams at him for being "silly", he decides to go home despite his new infirmity. Cut to a train where Alyosha spends time with many returning soldiers.

When Alyosha stows away in a freight car, he winds up sharing it with a very scared and very cute, young, Russian girl named Shura {Zhanna Prokhorenko}, who puts in a performance that's easily worth the price of this disk. Next thing you know, you're smack-dab in the middle of a love story. Not exactly your normal love story but one that's really touching regardless.

This is remotely similar to all of those old black and white war films that you've seen so many of. I can promise you it's better than most of them with no hesitation whatsoever. This film has some great cinematography going for it and a very nice artistic edge. It's actually a "warm" war film with a few nearly comedic moments and many nifty human interactions, that makes a nice, up front, "anti-war" statement and tells an awful lot about humanity while it's at it. It's a moving film that will have your emotions all over the map. You'll be alternately grinning and brushing back tears. Unfortunately, the ending may be a bit depressing to you: primarily because, at only eighty eight minutes, it will probably come well before you're ready for it.