Gripping story with well-crafted characters

An Exercise In Nonsense

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Within the first 5 minutes of watching this movie I was noticing some very keen attention to detail not seen in typical war movies. The Germanic Estonian uniforms were quite authentic, right down to the camouflage patterns and crests. The weapons, and even the handling of the weapons were true to WW2 doctrine of the time. On the soviet side you have actual T34/85 tanks, and soldiers sporting appropriate tunics and weapons. This authenticity helps with the immersion, otherwise without it, the plot means nothing.Its a war movie about a Foreign Volunteer platoon of SS soldiers. This is a point of view seldom seen, after all these guys are fighting on the side of Adolf Hitler. And there exists a vacuum for this subject matter. In-spite of that, there is a story to tell and it should be told. The movie takes a moment to humanize the characters. One interlude displayed the soldiers of the Estonian SS Platoon blatantly disrespecting a Nazi party member and joking about Adolf Hitler. Another scene showed the soldiers rescuing a child during an air raid. It tries to explain why good guys are fighting for the wrong side and even minimizes that issue during a friendly conversation between the main character and a Danish SS soldier. And it is true there were Corps of volunteers fighting for the Nazi's from Foreign countries. But it is not necessary to explain this, because at the heart of it this is about soldiers who are on the ropes fighting for survival just before they lost the war. So don't get too attached to the soldiers. Attrition is high.I won't give it away, but there is a very clever change of perspective that takes place about halfway through this movie. Nuff said about that. The acting is very good. At times you can tell a limited budget was all they had to make this, and perhaps you have to admire the resourcefulness of the producers and directors to get the most out of what they had.

It's hard to make a war movie not crossing hero line - in many war movies one side is good ones and another is opposing front. And ordinary people are left out-of-the plot usually. In the big WWII picture there are two sides - Germans and allies who recruits new soldiers from whatever country. But the problem is - what if country is small and want's to be neutral, but it can't be - because of big external forces ? In such case country is split into two opposing parts. And the smaller the country - the bigger chaos takes place in that picture which is made from the Estonia country perspective in WWII. So in the end - whoever wins in the world war - we lose, as nation of small country, because it's not our business after all. And this plot makes movie highly approachable from the ordinary people eyes, because there are too many war movies with heroes in it, and less with people who just tries to deal with a fact that soldier's duty is just another job which can break your life in an unimaginable way.

The idea to focus on the tragedy of the Estonians in this war is a good possibility to show how war destroys humanity. But focusing can also cause a wrong picture. Focusing on destroyed German cities like Dresden, could portray simply all Germans as innocent victims of the British bombardments.A lot of Soviet WW2 war movies have a deficit in not showing that not everybody wanted to fight for their ideas. But they all have one thing in common. The defeat of the Nazis is the core objective that unites Eastern Europe. This movie instead focuses on the reverse perspective as if none Estonian wanted to fight against the Nazis and all who fought were forced to by the Red Army.Somehow I get the feeling the writer tries to tell us, it would have been better if the soviets didn't advance back in 1944. A short research about the writer confirmed this thought a bit with his justified antipathy of the soviet system. The interesting question is, could the Nazis have been defeated without the Soviets? And if not, what would Europe and Estonia look like? Would there be more human rights till 1991 or could it have been even worse? Additionally, his often advocating for a stronger Nato in the Baltics to defend it against the Russians completed the picture for me. Sad to see this looks like a promoting for a new cold war.For those who watched the movie already: Just imagine, you would cut 2 minutes of this film, where the soldiers didn't want to salute to the Nazi. Without this 2 minutes this whole movie could have been shown by the Nazi propaganda to rise the fighting spirit by showing how cruel the communists were. There is simply no more disapproving of the Nazis than this 2 minutes. I would even go further, that this movie would be close to be banned in a lot of countries without this 2 minutes. Following the arguments of 2 other reviews I think victorious fighting soldiers in Nazi uniforms followed by 90min of soviet cruelties is not an anti-war movie! If the Soviet Union still existed, it would be a call to fight against the soviets! I strongly disagree with any building up of a bogeyman nowadays, 70 years after WW2, no matter if against Germans or Russians! Today's Germans and Russians are not responsible for WW2!

First of all,i've seen many war movies,both the old and the new.( from lets say "iron cross" to the "fury")And i must say,this has to be one of the best ww2 movies ever.Why?.(NOTE THAT this movie only cost 2 milion euros.) First:It has authentic Word War 2 vibe in it,meaning that everything or most of the scenes created a nice effect of actually seeing documentary of that time. Second:Amazing 2 side view from both sides fighting ( the russians and the Germans) Third: Besides great fighting scenes,a great story and really well showed drama of that time.Downsides:I actually couldn't say much,but GF pointed out that there wasn't much of a womans point of view on living on that time.And i have to agree on that.