Solemplex
To me, this movie is perfection.
HottWwjdIam
There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.
Mabel Munoz
Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
Jemima
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
bakerstreet-862-612840
If you're expecting a film like Fortress of War (2010), you're mistaken just like i was because this is a biographical film focusing on Lyudmila Pavlichenko who's a Soviet Union female sniper with 309 confirmed kills. I agree with the other reviewer who said that the title's quite misleading, this film's not mainly about the battle in Sevastopol itself. I don't understand why they didn't get a more befitting title for this film.With a non-linear storytelling style, this film shows the beforemath, the moment and the aftermath of the fearsome superiority of Pavlichenko aka "Lady Death" who hunted regular soldiers and officers in a battlefield during World War II. Yulia Peresild, who played Pavlichenko managed to portray the character really well. She's cold, suffering, heroic, and lovable, kinda reminds me of Mulan. I have to tell you the Russian dubbing for English parts are annoying, they should make Russian subtitles instead of dubbing. The war action scenes (shooting, camouflaging, covering, planning strategy, etc) even though interesting are too short which i'd estimate no more than 10% of the duration so it's overall drama and that's very unsatisfying.So if you like films about snipers such as Enemy At The Gates, American Sniper, you have to check this one out. I'd say this is isn't as good as Enemy At The Gates but it's as interesting as American Sniper.7/10
boris_kolarov
Before seeing Bitva za Sevastopol I didn't expect it to intrigue me as much as the other two Russian flicks I covered - Ispytanie and Chempiony. Thankfully, I was wrong.The main character of the movie - Lyudmila Pavlichenko - gets an excellent performance. You care about her, she is likable and badass at moments. The supporting cast shares excellence as well and as the film continues their characters get better and better. There's a great amount of action, provided with nice cinematography and some blood. Fortunately Bitva za Sevastopol isn't all about the action but for its story, which gets you more and more intrigued as the minutes pass with moments of war genre brilliance.A small issue I have is that it begins a bit too slow but the action, the drama, the characters pay off for the slow beginning.As a whole, Bitva of Sevastopol turns out as a personal favourite of mine, with its own way of getting a 10/10.
mosthebatman
Of course it's not exactly as it happened. The woman was married with a son before join the Army. I discovered it on Google(I hope you won't consider this information as a spoiler). That doesn't changes the fact that it's a good war movie based on true events. To tell the truth it was the first time i heard that Russians had women snipers. About the technical details now: I liked the black and white photograph, the places, the whole story generally. I admit that it could be better. I can't say it's the best war movie ever for World War II, but it's good enough to watch it without to get bored from a different side than American heroic movies(you all know what i mean...). If you are expecting John Rambo, search for something else. This movie is not for you :P Enjoy.
John Roddick
This is one of modern Russian movies made for the lowest common denominator. The plot and character motivations are over-the-top explained as if makers of the movie was very afraid someone at the very lowest end of intelligence scale will not understand everything. The main character is not likable and her background or motivations for being extremely reserved and grim person is never explained. Because of unsympathetic main character the whole movie is very hard to care about.Battle scenes are very few for such a movie and serve as illustrations rather than plot points. Some of the things taken from modern combat and movies are just silly, like navy seals style training and collecting tags from sniped enemies. That simply did not happen at that time in history. Sniping scenes are very weak, especially when main character hold the rifle it visually wobbles a lot until she pulls the trigger and gets perfect shot. It's just laughable. There's a cliché sniper-vs-sniper standoff subplot which ends way too quick, and ends in confusing "Han Solo shot first" situation.Also laughable are all the death scenes. Like actors came from some provincial theater and try to portray dying in a most over-the-top dramatic way.
