9th Company (2005/Russia/Well Go USA Blu-ray)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: C- Feature: B-
You hear
about the first superpower war in Afghanistan
when the Soviet Union tried to invade, but do
not see it much on screen. In Rambo III (1988) and the James Bond
film The Living Daylights (1987) we
see the heroes helping the resistance against The Soviets, though it is by
helping groups that would later support terrorism against The West. The underrated Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) shows how
murderous and predatory the USSR
was being, killing people wholesale as they invaded in very graphic terms, but
what about the Soviet side?
Fyodor
Bondarchuk’s 9th Company (2005) wants to be a combination of Das Boot, Full Metal
Jacket and Saving Private Ryan in showing the young men devoted to
the Motherland to defend it and help it expand, with the irony (one no one knew
then) that the country would (along with the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster
and new media) soon collapse and cease to exist. Though not as good as any of those three
films, it is an ambitious and often interesting project that manages to still
offer an alternate discourse and makes for a unique entry in the War genre.
It is
anti-war enough, especially considering it is about failure and disaster,
willing to criticize the end of the USSR fighting a useless, pointless
war. The action is not bad, production
realistic enough and acting a plus, even when it falls into some of the genre’s
clichés, but for all the war films suddenly greenlighted after Private Ryan had its commercial success, this stands up
to many of them very well. Anyone
serious about this kind of storytelling should go out of their way for this
film and everyone else should at least give this one a look.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot in the Super 35mm format by Director
of Cinematography Maksim Osadchy and the look is not bad, but can be derivative
and the actual stylizing drained of color, while the transfer has one too many
soft spots. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is
the only option (despite a claim of “5.1 HD” on the back of the case) and is
not lossless, but the sound design is decent and makes me wish for DTS-MA or
the like. The combination is impressive
enough, but could have been a little better.
Trailers
are the only extras on this edition, but more would be nice and a special
edition has also been issued with additional goods, so you could go for that
version too.
- Nicholas Sheffo
