levelclearer Review of 5 Days of War

5 Days of War (2011)

Old circus horse can not be taught new tricks.

[13 August 2011]

The author made a try to persuade us of the documentary nature of his movie while he failed even to abide by the rules of the political thriller genre. Old circus horse can not be taught new tricks. When you go to film a "based on comics" flick don't say you have produced a documentary. When you watch the picture you feel it almost physically how a Rambo mold invisibly haunts the movie and you want to exclaim: "Stop that trash, release the Rambo, and let us at least have some fun.". Still fun is enclosed: war time love story is intervowen with the plot which will give food for an excellent computer game. This movie really rocks sending authentic messages which however unfortunately have nothing to deal with the things the author tries to show on the screen. The first one is - money is everything. The second one - we want to see it this way no matter what it really was. The third one - action motion pictures with bad and good guys are candies which are much sweeter than real life. Just imagine an army consisting of sadists. An army of sadists. Every soldier in this army is a sadist. A sadist army is opposed by the army of saints. This is how the Russian and Georgian armies are portrayed in "5 days of august". OK. We will try hard not to remember about the US soldiers deeds in Abu-Graib prison in Iraq. We will try hard to erase from our memory Vietnamese villages burnt out with napalm, forests defoliated with agent orange, children without skin, tortured Vietnamese partisans, etc. Even if Senator McCain will try not to let us forget it very quickly. Sure we will forget about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Forever. And of course we will not make any generalizations from a single case. Agreed we understand that any army can have a number of people with hidden sadistic inclinations, which remain sleeping until they break out in crucial war situations. But that normally is a sad, tragic exclusion rather than a rule that characterizes the entire army. The movie authors so sincerely neglect this simple truth that the movie therefore lacks only one thing - those comics style "Pow" and "Bang" subtitles when Russian rockets hit a Georgian wedding. BTW, it's a very strange way of living out a guilt complex. Actually it was an Afghani wedding and an American helicopter, and the country was Afghanistan, not Georgia. US chopper crew took Afghani wedding for Al-Kaeda warriors. Sad. But it's war, it's people's factor. The answer is given in the titles before the movie - there stands in black and white: Based on the actual events. On the actual events torn from time, place, and nationality and dressed up in the Russian army uniform. The American helicopter cracking down on Afghani wedding transforms into Russian helicopter destroying Georgian wedding. Dr. Goebbels smokes nervously in the corner. Violating the primary human right for objective information this cinematic work becomes highly cynical with regard to real life. I think it would be a deed of honesty if movie producers openly classify their work as "fairy tale" or "sci-fi", recognizing that they have honestly fulfilled Georgian government order for creating of a national myth, a legend, which has nothing to do with reality and truth. Russians say "Fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, a lesson for a good guy". OK, let Georgian good guys learn to hate Russia from Hollywood made fairy-tales, and let's see whether these lessons will do them good in a historical perspective. As always Hollywood shows very nice and expensive visual effects. Especially when you realize that they were made for Georgian money and every blast of propane gas is paid from the pocket of the Georgian tax payer. Still visual effects is the best investment of money in all this work. I'm not surprised that Hollywood produces something like "5 days of august". They have a hand in it. There are people who would pay for such kind of music. They say we were here when it happened and we know well how it happened and what really happened here we know very well too, but we hope that Hollywood stars would help the Georgian point of view on the conflict to become dominant in the world. Why not ? But. Politicians may play games, but people are getting brainwashed, left living in the illusionary world where many things that take place in the real world simply don't exist. For example, you will never know about Orthodox Church temple where people of Tskhinval were hiding from Georgian raid burnt with all who were inside. Burnt by Georgian soldiers. You will never know about Georgian soldier yelling "yoo-hoo" and filming with his mobile phone camera as he worked his machine gun over the civilian houses. You will never know about a pregnant woman who was running for the Temple and was shot halfway by Georgian soldiers. You will never know about 80 year old eminent Georgian film maker, a live classic of Georgian cinema, who had to escape to Russia from Saakashvili's prosecution, just because he is too eminent and he doesn't agree with all russophobia of Georgian regime. You will never know that Russian troops and fleet started moving only when Georgians shelled and rocketed civilians of Tskhinval. You will never know about demolition of the monument to Russian and Georgian soldiers fighting shoulder to shoulder against Hitler. All this was left outside the camera still in order not to deviate from the emotional tune. Emotions ! Message ! Pathos ! The three whales of this tale. The most gruesome thing about this movie is that author violates even the basic rules of the political thriller and overwrites the history. What makes him do this, I do not know, may be he watched too many early Nazi movies. "Divide it by 16" as Russians say.