ada the leading man is my tpye

StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

hte-trasme I've seen three other films by Vladimir Bortko -- adaptations on "Heart of a Dog" and "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov and "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky. These were works that were close to my heart, and I thought Borko did a fantastic and mindful job of recreating them for the screen. Here he seems to have been given a much bigger budget, possibly a set of orders from the Russian government, and the short novel "Taras Bulba" by Gogol -- a piece of literature that didn't resonate with me nearly as much as the three aforementioned ones. While I loved some of Gogol's other stories, "Taras Bulba" struck me as mostly overblown, thoughtless nationalism, which didn't sit well with me. I didn't much care for this film either, so to be perfectly fair that could be because Bortko faithfully reproduced a book that I didn't love in the first place. Everything revolves around the inclusion of battle scenes and dead-serious scenes about going to battle, and it is assumed without saying that of course we will be rooting for the Cossack's over the Poles. Maybe we will be and maybe we won't, but using that as an assumption to make the film work means it's rooted in pure nationalism and nothing more. If that's alright with you, then fine, but it's not a substantive ideology. Even if we take it as given, there are few too many scenes of dying people who use their last breath to give a heartfelt speech about how the Cossack soul will never be vanquished. There are plenty of enormous pitched battle scenes with many very bloody wounds shown. The visual work on this is impressive, but it seems empty without a fuller context. The events of the plot seem entirely constructed to allow for more speeches about Cossack national spirit to be worked in, and as such are spread pretty thin. The result is that odd duck -- an action packed movie that is actually rather slow-moving. The up side is that there are some very good performances, especially from Bogdan Stupka and Igor Petrenko. They understand the material give performances that are as warlike and humorless as possible. I'm not an expert in the era of history on which Gogol based the source novel for this film, so I can't really address what has been brought up many times here -- the potential incongruity of the Cossacks mentioning Russia in their speeches and speaking Russian (as opposed to other characters, who speak Ukrainian with voice overs). But I think there is more nationalism than just Gogol's at work here, on the whole. A lot of technical skill and passionate acting went into this. Unfortunately, it's a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing but blind patriotism. That might make it a good watch for if you're about to go and kill some Polish people with your trusty sword today and need inspiration, but it doesn't make it a good film.

zigfriedthewriter Saw this movie just yesterday and I remembered the book I read in high school. Book I remember vaguely, read it a long time ago, but I did like this movie, especially because of the excellent play by the main actor and the story about the Cossack lifestyle. Novel is written in the high romantic era during the boom of nationalist feelings and its well represented on the screen (although I am not so sure was there so much Tsarists love with the Cossack when many of them were escaped surfs). Cossack lifestyle is hard, based on war, plunder and raiding like Mongols or Vikings of ages past and this movie shows that life and consequences of living it - hatred by more "civilized" Poles and Turks or struggle with other nomadic raiders like Tatars. Cossacks because of that fight against everyone, are suspicious to everyone (like Jews) and are only shown to trust those of their own Orthodox faith. Actors that portrayed Cossacks are mostly good, especially Taras Bulba. By the end of the movie you really become one with him and start to understand him and his struggle against the world while he is losing more and more. Poles are well done, they have every right to hate the Cossacks with them constantly raiding their towns. Final scene when Polish colonel when he spares his daughters son is also strong, you then see the glimpse of Taras Bulba if he was on the other side. Greatest flaw in this movie are special effects, rain that falls from clear sky, "wounds" in some cases along with soundtrack that could have been done a lot better when I see how much was invested in this movie. They are so weak that look like they were done for some small budget student movie, not a blockbuster financed by the Russian government. It is clearly seen that this is a Russian propaganda movie, but a very weak one, the only time I was really moved was with the ominous Taras Bulba's last words when they were burning him alive, the rest of the Cossacks haven't managed to give that same feel. Overall, good movie, but the ridiculous failure of the special effects reduces rating greatly.

cossack-5 I was really looking forward to watch this movie but when I actually got to see it, I couldn't stand more than 15 min of this amateur level time waster- silly and unbelievable speeches, video, sound effects... it was just horrible. I fast forwarded to the battle scenes and it was just as bad- a bunch of people in pretty dresses running around, gunshot sounds taken straight out of old western movies, Polish hussars charges looked like a slow walk in a park.. the whole thing looked like a parody.If this movie was a college cinematography project, I would give it 7/10, but it wasn't, so I give 2/10 for nice dresses.

Ivan Denisoff "Do we have powder still in our flasks?" asks Taras his comrades during a violent battle. It is quite often that this very question is attributed to contemporary Russian movie makers meaning whether they are still able to create genuine works of art. And for me this movie gives an affirmative answer, at least in relation of Vladimir Bortko. I watched this film yesterday and I am still impressed with it. I enjoyed how actors played though sure Bogdan Stupka makes an absolutely outstanding performance, but the whole actors' ensemble is very well doing. Also I found cinematography very interesting. And sure Bortko deserves praise for his solid work which reminded me about those soviet times when such masters as Gerasimov or Romm created their epics.This movie is about tremendously difficult choice between different values, between devotion to motherland (fatherland) and love for a woman, between traditional values of Russian people and values of west though in this movie we see how allegedly enlightened polish gentry (regarding itself as beings of higher order than cossacks ) executes cossacks in the most cruel way.Though I have to honestly admit that I don't know how fully this movie renders Nicolai Gogol' story. Anyway I found the movie very interesting by itself not even in relation to the original source.