646f9e108c Based on a true story of teen criminals in the Soviet Union during World War 2. As alternative to prison they are trained in the mountains of Armenia for a mission in Nazi Germany to blow up an important installation. All but one boy dies. Most die during the rigorous training & some die in Germany. It is still unsure what is exactly true or not according to what faction one speaks with, but surely the fact that at the awards ceremony it was a heated moment amongst believers and non believers that the event ever took place. The year is 1943. Colonel Vishnevskiy (Andrei Panin) receives an order from the government to train a group of saboteur soldiers who should stop the actions of a German army group called "Edelweiss". The mission is a top-secret one. Vishnevskiy trains young (14-to-15-year-old) boys from juveniles. They all know that after the mission is finished they all will be eliminated since they all know too much to be left alive. Foreigners might not know but in Russia the movie was at first promoted as "absolutely true story" which the author of the book survived himself. Thats why the attention to it was so great (to say nothing of the persistent advertising). <br/><br/>And then it turned out, quite all of a sudden, it was just the author's fantasy, it's not true, no kids were made terminators in the soviet time and sent to Nazis to heroically die. and there are even documents proving that is what Nazis tried to do! <br/><br/>The trick as you may have understood is soooo bad! To draw attention at any price? To rewrite history blaming soviet people for what they had never done? OK, we are grownups, we can just ignore the movie or its historical part, but what to do with kids who watched it… Alongside with the ongoing brainwashing how bad everything was at the soviet time. Making them ashamed for the past?<br/><br/>If our ministry of culture thinks suitable to sponsor such movies, i don't know what for culture they have there. <br/><br/>Apart from the history, the producers did everything to get tears out of us - poor kids in so hard conditions: hard life made them criminals (ah so) cruel power makes them kamikaze (oh really). such a fake. Would you watch this movie if characters were not that young?<br/><br/>And big thanks to Menshov, the producer of "Moscow doesn't believe in tears", a good movie made in the soviet time, for his refusing to give the award to Svolochi at some MTV ceremony. That was unbelievable and wonderful!<br/><br/>And today it's Victory Day in Russia and i would like to say thanks to all the people who saved the world from Nazis, who were dying for the better future for us. we will never forget that! We are immensely grateful! In "socialist" times Russian films were always and everywhere, with very few Western films shown, thus, in recent decades, I have not felt any particular urge to (re)watch Russian films, especially post-Soviet ones. But we all have our weaknesses and curiosities :) plus incidents happen… <br/><br/>Svolochi is meant to be a historical film, about WWII in the rear area far away from actual battles (somewhere in Kazakshtan), but it has turned out that it is all pure fiction - presented not very convincingly, with the exception of Russian crime scene and obscene language perhaps (not accurately translated into English). Reactions to the boys' behaviour and language by military personnel are odd, if not more, and adult military characters are atypical to the Stalin era - they seem hesitant, weak, speaking mostly gently, and the actors performing them are not front-rank… The ending dating back to 1943 is hectic and airy-fairy, and the very ending is quite ridiculous, taking into account modern opportunities in finding former acquaintances.<br/><br/>The film is "saved" by two good performances - Alexander Golovin as Kot and Sergey Rychakov as Tjapa; they squeeze the best/most out of this inconsistent story and focusing on their chemistry enables to wend your way through this 1.5 hour film without wtf! attitudes. But still, Svolochi is not a film you definitely must see, particularly if you have some knowledge of Russian values and language.
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377 weeks ago