This slick Russian war flick was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 2007 Academy Awards; although, if anything, it looks and feels more like the populist product of the Hollywood studios than one is usually used to seeing included in that category. Along with its comparatively large budget and epic scale -- and with the inclusion of over a thousand extras and the use of numerous helicopters and tanks on lone from the Russian military -- "9th Company" exemplifies the culmination of at least twenty years of Hollywood's varied approaches in dealing with armed conflict on film. Director, Fyodor Bondarchuck, has fashioned his film as a set of vignettes that follow a set of callow recruits through the various rigours and brutalities of boot camp as they train to become members of an elite company in the Soviet army, during the country's involvement in the civil war of Afghanistan (1979-1989), and which then progresses to the portrayal of a surreal mixture of boredom punctuated by sudden bouts of extreme horror: this, the recruits' experience of defending the Soviet military's transport columns against the battle-hardened Afghan guerilla fighters hiding in the sun-bleached mountains. This structure is itself an echo of Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" of course, but one can also see traces of just about every major Hollywood war film from the past thirty years; from the allegorical poetry of "Apocalypse Now" to the stylish polish of  "Black Hawk Down" -- with the bone-jarring immediacy of the opening battle scenes of Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" saved for the film's bloody finale: a reconstruction of the chaotic slaughter of a two-and-a-half day battle in which the isolated 9th Company held off a series of attacks from the Afghan rebel forces in the inhospitable mountainous landscape.

 

The film obviously elicits parallels with current conflicts involving Britain and America, but there is no real criticism implied of either the Soviet, or the current coalition forces', involvement in Afghanistan -- or anywhere else. Instead, "9th Company" belongs to the tradition of war movies that concentrate on the individual stories of a small set of characters involved in geopolitical events over which they have no control, rather than making a big statement about the politics of the situation. What we get with this film, in the final analysis, is a tribute to human endurance in the typical "heroic" mode; in which, after following the trials and tribulations of several ordinary but very different men from across the (then) Soviet Republic, we see them gradually develop a bond of comradeship under an extreme life threatening situation. In this, the screenwriters have probably taken a few nods from Oliver Stone's approach to the genre. The subtext, in the light of the break-up of the former Soviet states in recent years, seems to be that good relations should be maintained because of this shared history.

 

The problem for the film is that the characterisations are all rather pat, and the film consists of a stock set of characters, variants of which we've seen in countless war movies across time. The opening scenes, as we are introduced to the main characters saying their sentimental goodbyes to various loved ones, are shot in romantic rain-soaked widescreen with Dato Evgenidze's grandiose, sweeping score swelling and quelling with a patriotic fervour -- as it will continue to do throughout the film. 

 

The traditional head-shaving scene makes its appearance early on -- once again signifying the levelling of the characters' individual quirks as their obstreperous personalities are moulded to fit the soldier prototype. Next, an apparently inhuman brutal training officer called Dygalo (Mikhail Porechenkov) is introduced, himself a veteran of the 9th Company, apparently with a one-man mission to make his charges' training as difficult and unpleasant as possible -- but eventually emerging as a misunderstood puppy dog with a heart of gold! There's even a company "whore" nicknamed Snow White (Irina Rakhmanova), who enjoys nothing more than servicing the entire regiment, leading to the inevitable virgin-gets-his-end-away-before-going-to-war sequence, by which time the viewer will have anticipated exactly where the film is going.

 

The first hour or so of this two-hour-plus film is devoted to the training and the rivalries and disagreements between the main characters; the second half deals with their experiences on manoeuvres in the Afghan mountains. Clichéd though the characterisation may be, the portrayal of the Afghan population never gets more sophisticated than that of a shadowy, unfathomable people: a race of "Others", with almost mystical powers. Already, the recruits have been taught that Afghanistan has never been defeated in its entire history; and, not really understanding much of the culture of the country they have been sent to defend, the recruits see the people as untrustworthy, unpredictable aliens whose motives can never be trusted. The film never really attempts to distance itself from this view, sticking with the perceptions of its main characters, especially in sequences such as where one of the characters makes a trip into a mysterious Afghan mountain village in pursuit of a box of matches for his commanding officer.

 

The second half of the film is introduced by the first big action movie set-piece: an expensive CGI driven plane explosion, which appears to serve no other purpose than to announce to the world that this is Russia's entry into the major league of "spectacle" blockbusters. The film is meticulously digitally colour-corrected throughout (cold blues and greens for the initial training sequences; hot fizzing yellows for the Afghan manoeuvres sequences set  in the shimmering, sepia-tinted heat haze of Afghanistan; and finally, bloody red-orange for the grizzly battle sequence in the mountains, at the end) giving it the stylish aesthetic of a Ridley (or Tony) Scott epic; the film's lead character is played by an actor who looks like a young, lean Robert De Nero; and the rousing score is never anything less than a romantic and poignant reproduction of John Williams' work at its most moving. Predictable and audience-pleasing though it undoubtedly is, the film's final brutal battle scenes are incredibly gruelling -- inevitably so, considering how much time we've spent with these characters over two hours: to see them get blown to bits or shot to death in such vivid detail could never be anything less than traumatic -- and Bondarchuk (who also takes an acting role in the movie) does an undeniably good job in bringing home the bacon, resulting in such a hugely affecting conclusion. Is the film saying anything we've not heard before though? -- Not really. For a film which aims to champion the military heroism of the soldiers of the Soviet era, in the end the film makes at least as good a job of representing the total triumph of mainstream Hollywood's mode of representing masculine heroism with bombastic spectacle and cloying sentimentality.

 

Contender Entertainment have given this film the deluxe treatment with their special 2-disc DVD edition. Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with Russian dolby digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 audio options with optional English subtitles, the transfer is extremely satisfying. All of the extras appear on the second disc and consist of a forty minute "making of" documentary in which the cast and crew are interviewed and which features behind the scenes footage; a twenty minute film about the history of the conflict portrayed in the film, which features interviews with veterans of the conflict; footage of the Russian premiere and a gallery of trailers.