MovieChat Forums > Zvezda (2002) Discussion > Great, but whats it about?!?

Great, but whats it about?!?


Everybody says how good this movie is but whats it about?

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its about a russian sniper team during world war 2

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Its not about a russian sniper team.

It is about a group of russian scouts who go on a reconassance mission behind enemy lines, and basically spend alot of time finding German SS officers, kidnapping them, getting information from them and then killing them as the officer at the beggining says that there is no prisoners to be taken. it also has a love storey put in it, i think this is a bit out of place, but it dose add to the films quality. Bad ending though in my opinion i wanted them all to survive.

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It is about a small Red Army field reconaissance team (less than 10 men) sent behind the German lines during WWII. Their mission is to gather inteligence on German troop strength in the area of operations. They are soon discovered and the Germans make every effort to capture/kill them. As it turns out a German SS Panzer division (SS Wiking--a real German WWII division) is secretly regrouping in preparation for a counteroffensive and the Russian recon team needs to relay this information back to their HQ. Very good movie. Sort of Russia's answer to Saving Private Ryan, but instead of a rediculous and contrived rescue mission this film's plot is very realistic--with the exception of the "love struck" radio operator which was the only plot element that seemed out of place. One other thing that makes it better than Saving Private Ryan was that when the recon team captured prisoners there was a division amongst them about whether to kill the prisoners or not. In Zvezda, the reason for killing the prisoners is not "revenge" or hatred (as it was in SPR), but the absolutely real tactical necessity to avoid detection and capture by the Germans.

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ummmm Saving Private Ryan's plot was realistic, it was a true story, although his name was not James Ryan, it was Wolfgang something, I can't remember his last name although most of the other details are inserted and fictionaled. Zvezda sounds like a good film, tho, I'll take a look at it.

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The German tanks aren't 50s-vintage US Army gear.
They don't talk too much.
There's no searing self-examination.
All good clean fun.

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Saving Private Ryan's plot WAS NOT A TRUE STORY. This has been discussed a billion times. Look it up. The real story upon which SPR is based is nothing like the movie and it is almost deceitful to claim that SPR is based on a true story.

The obvious reason is that at a time of war you don't send 8 guys to get killed just to bring one home unless you are totally deranged or irretrievably stupid.

This is why Svezda is so much more than SPR. SPR had the great visual effects, but the story was so fake that I couldn't get over it. Only the opening, before I knew the plot about poor private Ryan, was enjoyable.

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they not sent somebody to rescue him (his real name was Sergeant Frederick Niland, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division
) because they knew where he is, but the important is they did sent HIM to home, to his family because his brothers were killed. (actually one of them was found alive in a japanese POW camp).
they cared about this

the russians were nothing like in the movie, the privaets hated the officers and everybody hated and feared the NKVD.
in the "liberated" areas they prosecuted the survivors and often find them collaborant with no reason, and sent tham to GULAG, it was asame story with former POW s
the russians killed germans because thay hated them, and because the germans killed so many people in the soviet unio. The human life was very cheap in that time in eastern europe.

THe enemy at the gates a realy realistic movie and stalingrad as well, none of them was made by russians...

the end credit is a tipical russian lying, they never liberated any country, special not poland if just know few basic fact about history its should be clear for you. 1939 the soviets invaded poland together with the nazis, the NKVD executed ALL of the polish officers who they could find around 15.000 of them in katny. they brought terror and kommunizm to whole middle and eastern europe. we had no good choice nazis or kommunist sztalin or hitler! basicly same bastards

after all is no suprise for me, i love russian movies, but you have to be REALY carefull with the facts, they living in a alterantive world where russia is popular, respected and a last hope for so many other nation...

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//the russians were nothing like in the movie, the privaets hated the officers and everybody hated and feared the NKVD.//
oh, really ? Did you see it by your own eyes ?

Soviet solgiers were really great. And the film is about them. People who died for us. People who wanted to live, to love, to be loved.... But they made their choice and gave their lives for us.
May be its better to say THANKS to them ?

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Halfway through the film I was thinking it was the worst propaganda film ever, and then there was the bit about "the liberation of Poland" and all doubt was removed. Some liberation it was, it took them 40 years and they´re still recovering from it. As for the great Soviet soldiers, you have obviously never heard about the mass rapes they commited as they were "liberating" countries...

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The occupation of Poland was a result of post-war politics, when the cold war began. Had there been no cold war there wouldn't have been a Warsaw pact either. Claiming the soldiers (as opposed to Stalin or the politbureau) would propagandize, before the fact, is ridiculous.

And yes, there were mass rapes. Not that it is excusable, but somehow I find it psychologically understandable after the genocide the Germans unleashed on them. 2 million German women raped vs. 18 million Soviet civilians killed, thousands of towns wiped out, an unknown but undoubtedly huge number of rapes, and you find the Soviet soldiers to be the ultimate bad guys?

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So Germans are bad to Russians ... and Russians rape Polish women in response??? I have trouble understanding this logic. Let's be real ... Stalin wanted it all ... just like Hitler did. They and their armies were equally evil.

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Did you ever hear of the Iron Curtain or the 7-10 million Ukrainians were were slaughtered?
How about all the intellectuals, teachers, doctors, military officers who were murdered by our "Friends the Russians."

Go to Poland, ask them what they think of the Russians.
Duh.

And the previous poster is correct, the Russians signed a secret pact with Hitler in 1939.

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the treaty included a secret protocol dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries.

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//they not sent somebody to rescue him (his real name was Sergeant Frederick Niland, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division
) because they knew where he is, but the important is they did sent HIM to home, to his family because his brothers were killed. (actually one of them was found alive in a japanese POW camp).
they cared about this//

There was a family in USSR in which died all NINE sons. One of them was 16 or 17 years old.

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Wonderfull film!

and please say THANKS to them off course, without them the result were different maybe ;)

Those reviews you find at http://www.foreignwarmovies.com.

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pepacska: you're right in about everything. Good films has always been made in Russia, including during the worst stalinist times, but even today it's quite impossible to show Russian soldiers as other than heroes or at least victims, and Russia as other than victim and, preferably and ultimately, the savior of mankind. In fact, Russian soldiers were uninformed, confused, distrusted, and at times cruel, murderous and totally undisciplined - except perhaps some front line and Guard units. Generally, the life of a soldier, and sometimes the life of a whole unit, wasn't worth a nickel. Of the prisoners taken, maybe some 5% survived the war and the incarceration after the war. Of the Russians captured by the Axis who dared to return, some were shot at once by the NKVD, most others perished in the Gulag. All these are issues still difficult to talk about in Russia, and Putin's revisionism don't make it any easier.

And SeraBal: well, I haven't seen such things personally, but most people in eastern Europe that have been around in those days have, and even though less and less of them are still alive, the collective memory of Russian conduct during and after the war will live for generations to come. In many former "socialist" countries nobody would even consider asking questions like the one you've asked.

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pepacska's comment has to be the most miss-informed and blatantly stupid comment I have ever read on this website.

especially this part:

"THe enemy at the gates a realy realistic movie "

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pepacska is a kind of stupid poland nationalist...

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In fact, Enemy at the Gates is crap, I agree, it wasn't the strongest point of Pepacska's comment, anyone who've read some serious stuff about Stalingrad would know that, but pepacska doesn't sound Polish to me, however, if acknowledging Russian atrocities in Poland makes you a Polish nationalist then I'm a Polish nationalist, too!


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Enemy At The gates wasn't crap, it was just a completely different kind of war movie than for instance Zvezda. And atleast it showed both the germans and the russians to be bad as well as good. And as war movies go, it looked authentic enough and the battle scenes were really well shot.

But let's stick to this movie. Although Zvezda was a really good movie, the problems posed here in this thread with the veterans/witnesses of "liberated" countries like Poland slowly dying out and the Russian intent to show the history of WWII in a more "glorious" way have to be taken seriously. It's basically a falsification of history. Although the russians as a people made a huge sacrifice to beat Hitler and deserve movies like this as memorials for their fallen soldiers it doesn't mean that it's beyond criticism and some sort of counter-voice deserves to be heard.

It's a shame that people like Pepacska are basically scorned for making their sentiments (which are based on fact in this case) known.

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There was a family in USSR in which died all NINE sons. One of them was 16 or 17 years old.
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Yeah and that's the problem with Russia. People who have died for no reason at all BECAUSE OF STUPIDITY OF USSR OWN OFFICERS are posthumously awarded medals and praised not because the powers that be really care about them but just to pacify the families who have lost their sons and stress how terrible the Germans were and how many people they killed.

The hard reality is that IMHO 2/3 of USSR soldier losses during WW2 were not because of Germans but came from stupidity, negligence, incompetence etc. of Soviet officers and generals and Stalin himself... It's still hard to imagine how Soviet Union could lose SO MUCH MORE soldiers in the war than, say, Germany that was fighting in all fronts and during the war was bombed into oblivion...

I won't talk about "liberation" crap as it's evident that the young generation of Russians has been brainwashed too already and with Putin in power nothing will change and I expect that Russia will start other wars in future... Judging by the fact that there's already mass hysteria about some absurd NATO invasion that has to happen soon........... and for which Russia's arming (actually though it's probably arming to invade its neighbours again).

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