Nikolay’s single, battle-worn T-34 tank almost takes out Jäger’s entire team - and Jäger himself - but he and Stepan are captured. We get to see Nikolay’s smarts and his grit as a leader, we get to see Stepan ( Viktor Dobronravov) the tank driver’s skills in action, and we meet Klaus Jäger ( Vinzenz Kiefer), the German tank commander and the villain of the film. It was easily the best use of the slow motion and CGI in the entire film.
I found out pretty quickly why that didn’t happen. I expected more build up, more attention to their planning, and more focus on the other soldiers on Nikolay’s team. We get to this battle quickly, with the clichéd “new leader has to earn his soldiers’ respect” happening across a few exchanges of words. Nikolay gets a field promotion to tank commander, and his mission is to hold off a German advancement through a practically abandoned village. He also knows when to slow it down and force our attention on something really cool or brutal or important. Sidorov knows exactly when to pull back and let the action play out normally. The first few times it happened, I started bracing myself to get tired of it quickly. We get to see shells fired in slow motion, shells ricocheting off of metal in slow motion, shrapnel flying around the inside of a tank in slow motion.
This section introduces us to the main gimmick of the action scenes, which is writer/director Aleksey Sidorov’s love for slow motion. There’s a fun cold open where Nikolay and another soldier escape an enemy tank in a truck. We meet Nikolay Ivushkin ( Alexander Petrov) in 1941 and T-34 gets right into the action. There’s no easier way to make your audience cheer for your characters than by having them face literal Nazis. I can see why it was such a crowd pleaser. This war film is currently the second highest grossing Russian-made film of all time. So obviously, I was the perfect mark for T-34. It reminds me of old naval battles between tall ships. Tanks lumber and the crews inside them have to work in perfect harmony to succeed.
There’s something about that kind of warfare that feels like a strange combination of modern weaponry and old-school battle techniques.
There have been some really good ones, like The Beast or Kelly’s Heroes or Fury, but I can never say no to another one. What there isn’t enough of, in my opinion, is movies about tank battles. There are plenty of war movies, and more specifically, there are plenty of World War II movies. Starring: Alexander Petrov, Vinzenz Kiefer, Viktor Dobronravov, Irina Starshenbaum
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