Don't listen to the negative reviews

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

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I can't really remember when was the last time I've actually watched something so poor. I'm not even gonna start on the plot and the Cossac mentality as it is a separate matter (like blaming the enemy army for defeating the regiment that was entirely drunk {sic!})So let's concentrate on the actual movie features... Picture: Narrow shots only, Special effects like in Braindead, Polish troops in Spanish conquistadors' helmets, The castle... they didn't even try to make it look properly...Sound: The whole thing sounds like from an old cassette. Sounds are so bad it actually makes you laugh, Silenced pistol sounds from James Bond imitating musket shots, Poles cursing in a very modern language,The whole thing is just... poor. miserable. There is no tension, no nothing. It's just watching some guys run throughout the set repeating stuff about Matushka Russia and Orthodox church. Actually every character repeats the bloody sentence just before dying "So good to be dying for Russia and orthodox church"... It actually reminds me soviet cinema where deadly wounded characters were giving speeches about the advantages of living in Soviet Union or something close to it in abstractness...Forgive me please being as chaotic and poor as "Taras Bulba" - it's my first time...

It is a unsuccessful screen version. Fights and if film consists half of war it is shown as old shootings 50 years ago are very badly made. Actors are good, but that pathos of patriots is far-fetched. It is not present at Gogol. The director did not know my opinion that on a genre will be better and has drowned all in blood.The big minus that if a trick master has been expelled from movie by director. It is a minus to the director who cannot work on modern movie. And the result of visually beautiful duels is a parody of the battle. It is attempt to make rigid cinema ridiculous when you see as fight on a background cossacks. For the main heroine have forgotten to write the text - it only laughs. Each cossack considers as the duty (before death) to tell pathos words. But they are unnatural in such situation.I am assured, that it is cinema 25000000 dollars are not necessary

I'd like to start off with what is good in this movie, for the list will be infinitely shorter than what is bad.Good points: 1. Bogdan Stupka ('Taras Bulba') performance. His presence in the movie is the only excuse to see the movie in the first place.2. Attention to detail in costumes and observing cossack traditions. The movie can be a good reference for re-enactors of Zaporizka Sich and Rzech Pospolita of XVI century.Bad points: 1. Patriotic speeches comprise over 50% of the total movie time. Every single cossack having at least one line in the movie, had to proclaim a speech about the never-ending glory of orthodox faith and Russian land before dying. I mean, it is OK once. It can be touching. However, in Taras Bulba there are 5 or 6 nearly identical speeches within 5 minutes span. Around the third speech/death sequence it gets really boring and you think 'will you please just shut up and die?' The word 'Russian' appears in every other sentence of the movie. I mean, I know those are Russians who make the movie with the aid from the government. I bet, anyone from outside USSR will return from the theater with the firm belief those were Russians fighting Poles. But hey, the entire thing actually happens in Ukraine! Yet, reference to Ukraine is carefully avoided and quickly mentioned only twice in the entire movie.2. Battle scenes. The movie attempts at Braveheart realism with close-ups of wounds. Which would have been OK, if they haven't shown close-ups for nearly EACH SINGLE CUT AND PIERCE in the movie. Coupled with unimpressive execution of one-on-one duels and poorly organized mass scenes (you get the full screen of cossacks and Poles walking (not running!) chaotically without any apparent purpose or sense of direction, it creates seriously sad impression.3. Performance of the younger cast. Vdovichenkov is no longer a criminal from 'the Bumer' (the BMW) but his line 'Ty chto skazal?!' (What have you just said?) was performed in the XVI century church in the same manner as previously at the criminals' meeting in 1990s. Younger son, Andriy (Petrenko) is not nearly as passionate as his father, Taras, (Bogdan Stupka). Yeah, I betray my motherland and my father, because I love you. No big deal.4. Soundtrack is as awful as in Bortko's Master and Margarita.

"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.