Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Melanie Bouvet The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Kirpianuscus ...for a time, an age and a country. for Stalinism. precise, honest, simple. and, more important, useful. a film about young people. and the brutal discover of truth. about the nuances of an unique age. and the clash of freshness of youth against near reality. sepia sequences. definitions. traits of teens. love and happiness. and the message. sure, it is easy to analize the film from the perspective of Glasnost. but, in strange manner, that remains just a detail. it is a powerful film. for story, performances and cinematography. and that could be the lead motif for see it.

hte-trasme This was a touching and a subtle film. Made a few years before the end of the Soviet Union and set at the cresting height of Stalin's power (and, as the title suggests, just before the looming World War), it manages the trick of being at the same time both nostalgic for a bygone time and the youths who lives through it, but also unflinching about the horrors that the political environment caused people to commit against each other. I don't know for sure and I haven't read the story that was the basis for the film, but I get the strong feeling that it was at least semi- autobiographical on the part of the author, and everyone involved in the film does a strong job of communicating his mixed feelings of affection and horror for that time. The photography alternates between sepia monochrome (usually at school) and color (at home or out in nature), and it's the first time I've seen this trick used in a way that works not only well but also subtly -- it underscores in an understated way the themes that the film raises of humanity, freedom, and choice versus duty to the state. While it raises these themes, it scrupulously manages to avoid being didactic about them. We are allowed to draw our own conclusions on what the characters discuss, which is pointedly what they themselves are not allowed to do. Touchingly, it becomes clear that those who are drawn in to acting so in humanly do so because the ideals of the revolution that they fought for are so dear to them that they cannot bear to imagine it betrayed. In one touching moment we are reminded that it was Lenin himself who warned against a black-and-white, right-or-wrong definition of what the truth is, and it painfully obvious that that is not at all the philosophy that has been enacted in the state that pays him service.

kansaj There are movies, which i don't have the wish to see second time, because the first impression was so deep and insightful, that the second time raise the fear that it could disturb what I gained from the first one. And this movie gives much, too much, question after question, where no answer is absolute. It is movie about The Life, about the wish to live and about the fear of it. It describes the life of some young Sowjets before the break of the Nazi invasion, where the Sowjet presence is depicted with the real touch of emotions. As a typical Sowjet (Russian) movie the feeling and the play of the actors dominates, but because of the confrontation between young and old, in between the young ones and the old ones, there is no single cadre, which gives me a second of time to relax and I jump form one personage into another. I think that it is amazing how this feeling drama, succeed to overcome the tragedy of the situation, of its fearful environment and to glorify the Human. Somehow there is no trail of judgment, but the actors' play resolve it in the endless search for happiness of their personages. There many strong movies showing what human do to other human, this movie shows us what one can do to it self. Just the end is a bit of pathetic, but it is the true end, unfortunately, where the unification is matter of the death.

mvp9 its a harsh view of the life lead in stalin's russia. The title indicates that a war was on even before Hitler invaded (it takes place in '40 before russia was invaded). 1984 in its true, real, form where people are so penetrated by the dogma around them, they are virtually willing to denounce their children and words like truth and justice are unknown. (one of the girls asks her mother, "what is istina?" which means 'higher truth') the suffering befalling the kids in the movie is tragic and heartfelt. Its excellently done and the acting is superb (in the russian style). There is a reason why it is rated higher than godfather.