During the Civil War in Russia a group of White Guard officers is trying to rescue the family of the tsar Nicholas II captured by Bolsheviks. The officers face betrayal and fight a Red Army detachment sent to eliminate them. It is the Red Army commander against the head of the White Guard group. The only thing that matters is who will be the first to reach the tsar placed under arrest in Yekaterinburg...
Reviews
best movie i've ever seen.
The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Soviet cinema (and other art forms) spent 70 years mythologising the Russian Civil War of 1918-1921, with special attention paid to creating Bolshevik heroes (galore) and demonising their opponents (of all stripes). The cinematically tiresome and historically ludicrous results are still showing on Russian television, and will likely be for decades-- which makes one wonder what children growing up without ever having known the Soviet Union can possibly make of them. Why, they must ask themselves, are the Bolsheviks still heroes on TV when we know they weren't in history? A film like Gospoda Ofitsery: Spasti Imperatora (Officers and Gentlemen: To Save the Emporer) makes a modest contribution toward redressing the balance. It's far from great cinema; it is, instead, cinema that tries hard, if you will, to entertain and de-ideologise at the same go. Here and there it succeeds. It clearly had a respectable budget and some moderately well-known actors, plus a special effects unit that could do a creditable job with battles scenes and explosives.The plot involves a commando group of officers detailed to save the lives of the imprisoned Romanov family. There are several sequences which tell a good story in themselves, but the whole of the film is really not impressive or sustained movie-making. Briefly put, the signal virtue of this production is its point of view: the heroes are the actual good guys and the villains the actual bad guys. And in the context of Russian history-as-presented-in-the-cinema, that counts for a good deal.One hopes that another Russian Civil War blockbuster, "Kolchak" -- due to be released shortly -- can add rather more to this step in the right direction.