9th Company

Set in 1989, near the end of the 10-year Soviet-Afghanistan conflict, Fyodor Bondarchuk's 9th Company aspires to be the Russian equivalent of Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Rambo, all rolled into one. Based on real events, the story is stuffed with a stock company of idealists, misfits, and just plain grunts losing their innocence in a foreign war that—we know through history's hindsight—they're doomed to lose. Among the troops are the sensitive Vorobey (Aleksey Chadov), the battle-hardened Lyutyy (Artur Smolyaninov), the artistic Dzhokonda (Konstantin Kryukov), and new father Stas (Artyom Mikhalkov). Afghanistan became the Soviets' Vietnam, yet for all the grueling warfare in an unfamiliar land for an unclear cause, 9th Company is an unabashedly patriotic paean to brotherhood, loyalty, and honor, where defeat is transformed into some romantic notion of victory. Bondarchuk doesn't slip in even a hint of criticism of the Soviet occupation and even suggests a faint nostalgia for the old days of the Soviet Union. A grandly mounted and lengthy work that became the most successful Russian movie of 2005 (winning their equivalent of the Oscar), this is a strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)