The battle of Brest in the very early days of the German Nazi war against the Soviet Union was widely known first
after Sergey Smirnov writing about it (?) and the film is dedicated to the heroes who defended the Brest Fortress.
OK, so this IS a russian patriotic WW2 film, but that's OK to a western audience i guess who eagerly swallows
the patriotic Hollywood slush that are force fed into our throats on an almost daily basis.
Russian war films mostly are refreshingly objective and unpatriotic and even the german soldiers usually are shown
as human beings, but here the germans are nasty, massmurdering the Brest civilians.

The film starts June 21 1941 and we get to know a couple of people, the 13 year old boy Alexander "Sasha" Akimov
(Aleksey Kopashov), the Division Commissioner Fomin (Pavel Derevyanko), the Major Pyotr Mikhailovic Gavrilov
(Aleksandr Korshunov) and the soldier Kizhevatov (Andrey Merzlikin) the father of Sasha'a friend Anya.
There are rumours about Nazi Germany attacking and the Major is worried about the position of the Brest fortress
and the city if that should happen, the possibility of a retreat would be cut off and the defenders would be left alone
on the wrong side of the frontline.

And, Yes, early in the morning the 22nd of june 1941 the Wehrmacht attacks with bombplanes and then with tanks
and infantry, and the massacre of the civilians begin. This film is about the brave defence of the Fortress, a hopeless
task without any hope of backup from the Red Army, as the germans was pushing the frontline deeper and deeper
into Russia with their initially very effective Operation Barbarossa offensive.
Brest was left far behind and isolated and the russian soldiers was doomed but still refused to give up their resistence
against the fascist horde. It's dark and gloomy but another well made russian WW2 film well worth seing.
Bluray in widescreen 2.35:1 with russian audio DTS-HD or 5.1 and different nordic subs