zcharles
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Joined: 9/13/2012
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Just watched the movie today; very nice indeed! :)
Great equipment, yeah.
And great shots.
Now I'm going to make some negative comment, so please be prepared and calm down: I', not flaming, there's no need of nationalistic armed defence of the movie. :)
The thing that I don't like much is that russian are pictured like sheeps in many scenes:
1: their tanks never hit the target like bad guys vs hero in Hollywood movies. At distances of 100 metres it was almost impossible for a stationary tank to miss the target, even if russian tanks were witout sight they cuold have not missed target... (well, in 1941 there were some witouth sight, yeah, but they aimed the gun with the coaxial DT28, and in 1944 they hit targets 50% of the time, and almost 100% at those distances; problems at 1Km and more where solved firing 2-3 HE, than AP, but this is from both sides and in open spaces). There are many russian tanks in ww2 that destroyed many german tanks each, some reaching the number of 50. I don't kwno if russians sent to finland their worse troops with worse equipment, but anyway the russian tank losses due to finnish tank fire are a bit too high in this movie, compared with the finnish losses. Scenes like that of finnish tanks advancing and being missed are wrong.
And there is a scene with a StuG taking T34 and infantry by surprise while resting again at 100 metres or something; well, the noise of a tank is heard even 10 minutes before seeing it, even in the forest. MAy this scene be possible? If yes, russian really really dumb! :)
2: finnish tank never explode, while rissuan tanks catch fire like Shermans (that could be right since ammo were stored unprotected); but finnish tanks never explode, or catch fire, or something, there is max 1 wound or killed... This is wrong, since russian used AP, not APCR against those tanks, and AP are explosives. Those scenes again seem a little like Hollywood-good-guy scenes: I hit the bad guy and he explode, he hits me but it's just a scratch. Again, a little unbalanced... :)
3: russian are cowards like sheeps; there is a scene where they abandoned a working T34 in the middle of the road; if this is still possible, it still does not seem realistic to me, knowing that russian have been maybe the bravest soldiers in WW2 (in terms of stuborn and almost stupid resistance). Episodes of extra russian resistence are countless, may it be that they abandoin their working tanks in this way? In another scene there is a man shooting pzfaust and taking out 2 T34; this is certanly more accurate than the tank duel scenes since I think that infantry AT weapons and german bombers made the best part in killing the 300 tanks that russian loose, but in this scene you see the T34 come along the road with infantry singing like if the war is already finished. Not at all a scene of a battle. And when the finnish corporal hits the tanks, the infantry disappears in the woods and is never seen again. Really, they seem like child with weapons, sheeps without dog.
Yes, in this movie russian are completely cowards and incapable of understanding anything of the war. I understand that they could lose 100 men against a single MG, it could happend with some commanders (like the cossak regiment that charged 6 times german MGs out of moscow in 1941 due to direct Stalin order :)), but this seems to be the constant line of the movie. Sometime it's more like a movie of zombies rather than a WW2 movie.
Well I'm Italian and we made a really poor part in WW2 due to tragic command line :), tragic doctrine of war :), and tragic AT capabilities :), but from the stories of our survivors from russia, russian were not at all that dumb people as shown in this movie; and germans could probably say the same :)
And so, being an Italian I have a huge admiration for northern people like finnish, swedish etc; it's a commonplace here to look at those countries as paradise countries to copy and to follow, so if some finnish is goind to bombard me for this post, please consider my admiration for you; I'm not attacking you, really. But this movie sound poor in terms or realism. I've searched the net for comments about this movie and the battle in general, and I've found a very high level of finnish patriotic nationalism; this is normal since we're talking about war :), but I've the suspect that this nationalism may in some way have "touched" the movie too.
That said, I'ts sure that finnish troops were superior in terms of experience and combat capabilities, but from what I kwnow the best part of the resistance has been made by the fortifications, the artillery, the germand AT infantry weapons. HEad-to-head battles with russians were to be avoided following the german reports of the war, is it possible that for finnish troops it was not so? :) In effects, in this movie it seems that the russian advance has been stopped most by finnish personal bravery and russian personal deficence and stupidity rather than fortifications. :)
Thanks for reading, sorry for my bad english, and if you have something to say I'll be happy to read it and improve my knowledge of the facts.
:)
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Tali-Ihantala 1944: A review of a movie - 
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