Audrey laughed when I suggested the Russian tank movie T-34 (2018) for a stay-at-home date night film, but it made a perverse kind of sense. I love tanks, she loves Russian history and we both love history and adventure movies. It turns out that this film, called by some "'The Fast and the Furious,' only with tanks," was just the thing for mid-week viewing together.
("Together" in this case meaning in the same room, socially distanced, with separate popcorn bowls, as Audrey is on self-isolation due to an outbreak at her school - she has subsequently tested negative for COVID.)
The film, produced in Russia, by Russians, and with sponsorship by the Russian government (which loves callbacks to the Great Patriotic War) has been accused by some of jingoism, but if T-34 is guilty of anything, it is just melodrama.
In T-34's opening, a lone Russian tank (with some infantry support) commanded by freshly-minted junior lieutenant Nikolay Ivushkin helps blunt an armoured assault just outside Moscow. By the end of the battle, a standoff between the heroic crew and SS Commander Klaus Jager leaves everyone presumed dead, but lo and behold: Ivushkin, bearded and refusing to give his name or rank, appears in a P.O.W. labour camp. Jager discovers him there and offers the Russian the 'opportunity' to repair and crew a salvaged T-34 tank as a moving target against his class of cadets. Can he and his demoralized crew escape from under the very noses of their Nazi captors?
Well, at the very least, it should be fun finding out, and we certainly thought it was.
Here's the thing - if the bad guys in your movie are literal Nazis, then as far as I am concerned, your heroes don't need a ton of motivation, and they don't even need to be that heroic. Ivushkin and his crew are, though, and also very good at their jobs, pushing some of the fight scenes into the territory of 'competence porn,' but again - Nazis. So I don't care.
What is important to me in a film like this is that if your heroes are going to be paragons, then your villains can't be stupid, and they aren't. With exception of the camp commander, even the cruelty and sadism are kept on a low boil for the majority of the film. Sure, torture and execution are applied willy-nilly in case the viewer forgets that, you know, Nazis are evil, but the bad guys aren't portrayed as baby-eating zealots devoted to National Socialism either.
Likewise, Ivushkin and his crew aren't waving the flag all the time either - they just want to live and return to their homeland. It is about as simple a story as you can have, really.
In a film like this, it would also be easy for the vehicles to start to supercede the characters riding in them, and while the Nazi crews are largely ciphers, Ivushkin and his crew are given at least a few chances to appeal to us as humans as well.
But make no mistake, it is the tanks that are the stars of the action sequences.
Despite being largely digital, the T-34 and its panzer opponents are astonishingly realistic, bringing a real sense of weight, noise and threat to the scenes they are in. The extensive use of CG allows the battles to be depicted clearly and dramatically, interspersed with interior shots of crews loading heavy shells into the breech of their main guns, or furiously spinning cranks in order to manually traverse the turret.
Slow-motion sequences depict red-hot anti-armour rounds glancing off the sloped sides of the titular tank, or opposing shells crossing within inches of each other (or even closer). Instead of simply slugging it out with each other, or remaining in place so some Sgt. Rock equivalent can run up and drop grenades down conveniently open hatches, the viewer learns very quickly how mobility can be superior to firepower in most instances. Does some impossible stuff happen? You bet it does, but again, this is a story, not a reenactment.
(And as a quick sidenote for the two other readers who care about this sort of thing: it is good to be reminded that the T-34 itself is considered by many to have been one of the best and probably the most influential tank design of the Second World War. Blitzkrieg originator Heinz Guderian even pronounced it as being superior to the German panzers of the early war. And did some of the early scenes remind me of my old Warhammer 40K Valhallan army? You know it did!)
There are not a lot of surprises to be had in the story, but there are moments of poignancy, insight and even a handful of laughs. We were never sure just how bittersweet this escape story might end up being, or how many Russians might survive until the end credits.
In the end, Audrey and I both had a great time, and although T-34 is far more of an adventure movie set within a war than a war movie itself, fans of both genres could do worse than to check it out on Amazon Prime.
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