5.9 | / 10 |
Users | 2.5 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
When in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their troops quickly besieged Leningrad. Foreign journalists are evacuated but one of them, Kate Davies, is presumed dead and misses the plane. Alone in the city she is helped by Nina Tsvetnova a young and idealist police officer and together they will fight for their own survival and the survival of the people in the besieged Leningrad.
Starring: Mira Sorvino, Gabriel Byrne, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Olga Sutulova, Mikhail EfremovWar | 100% |
Drama | 61% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Russian: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
If the Russians didn’t exactly invent the propaganda film, they certainly raised it to heretofore unknown heights of persuasiveness and artistry, as evidenced by the works of Eisenstein if no other Soviet filmmaker. Still, one’s breath catches just for a moment when the opening credits of Attack on Leningrad roll by and we see that the film was produced with the collaboration of the Russian Ministry of Culture. Certainly the siege of Leningrad is one of the most tragic and emotionally devastating stories of World War II, and is ripe for a filmic adaptation, and probably indeed even a bit of nationalistic, flag waving propaganda to boot. What’s so patently odd about this internationally cast but Russian filmed outing, then, is how cavalier the film is about history and how actually surprisingly dismissive it is of the Soviet government’s own handling of the Leningrad “situation.” It’s commendable in a way that Russian freedoms have evolved to the point where a filmmaker doesn’t have to toe the (literal) Party line in order to see his work actually make it to the screen, and so Attack on Leningrad’s rather fair minded approach to both Russian and German malfeasance during the siege is laudatory. But the wholesale slaughter of historical accuracy and dramatic continuity are other matters entirely. The film features a really interesting and impressive cast and some incredibly well shot set pieces and it attempts (rather fitfully) to instill some personal connection to what is still an epic saga, but with some of the shoddiest ADR in recent memory and a rather haphazard tone and inconsistent acting styles, Attack on Leningrad feels like a little bit of a siege itself.
Attack on Leningrad Is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Entertainment One with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The film exists in two fairly radically different image worlds, so to speak. The German scenes are bright and colorful, with nice saturation, excellent fine detail and crisp and appealing contrast and solid black levels. The Leningrad sequences, on the other hand, have been purposefully desaturated almost to the point of becoming monochromatic and they are also filtered oddly at times, which gives the overall look of these segments (which are after all the vast bulk of the film) a fuzzy soft, overly grainy appearance which suffers from a lack of fine detail and is especially prone to crush in the darker scenes. This was obviously done intentionally to highlight (no ironic pun intended) the shortages and suffering of the people of Leningrad, so from an artistic choice perspective it's completely understandable, but when thrust up against the really sharp and detailed looking German scenes, the rest of the film literally pales by comparison.
As mentioned above in the main body of the review, our specs, which allow for listing only one language at a time, is a bit misleading with regard to this title. The main audio option, presented via a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, is in a combination of Russian, German and English. I listed it as Russian because that's how it's listed on the menu and the audio codecs display on the PS3. Russians speak Russian, Germans speak German and the Americans and other English speakers speak English. There is a frightfully bad English dub presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 that really should be avoided at all costs. Yes, it's in English, but it presents the Russians speaking with faux Russian accents (lots of rolled "R"'s) and Germans speaking with faux German accents. There has been some appallingly bad dubbing done on this movie whatever the choice is. While the lip movements match the Russian and German language sequences at least relatively well on the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, it's as if Sorvino and Byrne's ADR sessions were done via telephone where they weren't able to see themselves on screen. It sounds like an exaggeration, but that's truly how bad their voices synch up to their lip movements. It's almost embarrassingly bad at times. If you can get past that major distraction (something frankly I couldn't), the rest of the DTS mix is really quite good, with some excellent immersion in the battle scenes, full bodied fidelity and some fantastic LFE in a number of segments featuring gunfire or explosions.
There are the makings of a spectacular film in Attack on Leningrad. Many of the elements are there, including an excellent cast, beautiful production design and an impressive flair for staging by the director. But something went pretty seriously awry somewhere along the way. Whether there's an original version of this out there somewhere that's longer and make a bit more sense is a question I'd love an answer to (if any enterprising reader knows, let me know, please). The story of the siege of Leningrad certainly deserves to be told and be known more in depth by the world at large, as it obviously is by the Russian people. There are simply a number of hurdles which must be overcome to be able to tolerate Attack on Leningrad, not the least of which is about the shoddiest dubbing job I personally can recall. If you're a patient soul and can overlook a number of issues, there's the kernel of a really moving film here.
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