I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

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.

A response to moronic reviewers.The majority of the bad reviews here come from America, where it seems there can be no positive reaction to beauty of image, poetry, or an understanding of Russian cinema. It is lamentable that this film does not get higher ratings, but then I sense homophobia to be at work. Arguably the Russians have got used to coded images in their films, especially towards the beauty of the young male face and figure. From Eisenstein, through 'Ballad of a Soldier' to 'Father and Son', and if homoeroticism is there, under a cruelly oppressive series of political regimes, the code is necessary for survival. America needs no codes, it just ignores positive representation, and those that exist get lost in independent gay film which rarely gets seen outside of festivals.This is a beautiful film. Watch it as you would read a poem. 'Mirror' by Tarkovsky is applauded as a masterpiece, and this film, in all its glorious mystery of image and action, stands, needing no comparison. There is a place beyond traditional meaning, and that place is the imagination, and of course it is not a film that releases all its meanings, subtexts and observations on Russian life to a reductive interpretation. The homophobia of some reviews is never quite stated, but is there; what is less obvious is an understanding of the profound inner soul of Russian cinema at its best.

Oh my .... my Russian film kick has turned up a rarefied film. Its vaguely about a Russian boot camp. Lots of young soldiers looking at the camera, looking at each other. Marching by in uniform, by the dozens. Swimming. Mass sponge baths. Yes they give each other sponge baths.This film makes me speechless. Can a movie possibly be this bad? And its quite artistically filmed, with lots of locales and a big cast. Nothing really happens during the movie, although there seems to be some subtle winking going on between the soldiers. But then there's other soldiers that keep exclaiming "Don't goggle me!".The movie manages to be as slow as a snail, yet impossible to figure out whats going on.the camera slowly dollies past each scene, which is generally a bunch of soldiers doing the same thing. They may be standing at attention.... they may be walking down the hallway, but you get to watch all 200 or so soldiers pass, every time. When they pan over the faces of the soldiers standing at attention, you get to see the motionless expression of, like all of them!

This movie was either too deep and beyond my simple intelligence due to language and sufficient English subtitles or the people making this movie were uncertain of what the movie was suppose to convey. The movie was very vague, confusing and just left me feeling that I had wasted about 3 hours of my time. Yes, 3 hours, because I had to keep going back from the beginning to see if maybe I had missed something. Were these guys in boot camp? Were they in an insane asylum? Were they in a prison? I wish I could get the writer to tell us what he was trying to convey. I am really unable to give a summary because this movie jumps around from scene to scene. I don't know if at one point it is a real scene or someone's dream or imagination. In the end, I am uncertain if all the characters in the movie got killed, died or committed suicide. I do not recommend this movie.

I watched the film with my DVD player on double and sometimes quadruple speed and I don't think i missed a thing.Since when does the army(of any country)take the time to have each soldier laboriously sponge bath one another? Why, when a soldier comes into the barracks drunk and late while everybody is asleep, does he pee on another guys face? WHY DID EVERYBODY JUST STARE AT THE CAMERA!?!?!?!?!?! Yeah, there were some artistically done shots, but they were not enough to make up for the three minute shots of absolutely nothing happening. For instance the time when the soldiers were all standing in a group. The camera panned across there faces, which took like two minutes. Then when the camera got the end it started panning back in the other direction. The whole scene took like 5 minutes and and I didn't even recognize any of the people in it.I've seen a lot of art-house films and a lot of art and film in general in my life, but this film was just kinda boring.