T-34 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

T-34 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 12, 2019

If you were to poll World War II history buffs about tank combat in that epochal battle, my hunch is many, maybe even most, armchair historians would almost reflexively think of Rommel and the North African campaign. While patently ludicrous on several levels, the Russian outing T-34 (the title alludes to a line of Russian tanks) at least makes it clear that there were other battlefields where tanks were a major part of the fighting forces. In doing some background research on T-34 in preparation for writing this review, I ran across this article from the British newspaper The Guardian , which details the film’s record breaking opening weekend at the Russian box office. However, the article also includes this somewhat hilarious précis of the film, offered by what the article states is Russia’s “Culture Ministry”:

This is a drama about how a concentration camp prisoner escapes from fascist captivity in an attempt to preserve his life, love and devotion to the motherland.

As might be gleaned from that summary, T-34 isn’t “just” a war film, meaning that there’s a good deal of screen time given over to “noncombatant” elements. That said, the film begins with a blisteringly exciting sequence which introduces Nikolay Ivushkin (Alexander Petrov), who unsurprisingly becomes the main Russian focal character. Ivushkin manages to escape death in this opening sequence with some pretty fancy driving maneuvers, and he is almost immediately put in charge of a defensive effort against the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, albeit with only one dilipidated T-34 tank at his disposal. While Ivushkin and his crew do manage to take out a large number of Germans, they (or at least the ones who survive) are taken prisoner, which is where the “concentration camp” element enters.

In one of those screenwriting conceits that may frankly cause some viewers to roll their eyes, Ivushkin “meets cute” (or something like that) with one of the Nazis he had battled with earlier. Klaus Jäger (Vinzenz Kiefer) has been tasked with “recruiting” a Russian tank crew to serve as target practice (more or less, anyway) for Nazi tankmen learning their “craft”, and of course Ivushkin is drafted (more or less, anyway) for the job. There just so happens to be an abandoned T-34 lying around (more or less, anyway) that Ivushkin can utilize, but the Germans’ plans to not allow the Russians to have live ammunition backfires (sorry) when Ivushkin and his crew discover some hidden shells inside the tank. A daring escape from the camp is plotted, leading to a series of showdowns that provide regular jolts of adrenaline, even if the entire film suffers from certain lapses in logic.

Despite this testosterone fueled (and not so coincidentally almost exclusively male-centric) film probably having enough action adventure elements to satisfy genre fans, it does try to stuff a perhaps needless love story into the proceedings as well, as Ivushkin “meets cute” in another way with a translator at the camp named Anya (Irina Starshenbaum). That angle ostensibly provides some emotional tethering that a bunch of guys shooting huge shells at each other from within moving metal fortresses may not quite achieve, but this is a film, not unlike several that have come out of China lately, which may appeal more to those with appropriately nationalistic backgrounds (i.e., Russian in this intance) than to the general (Western) filmgoing public.

T-34 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

T - 34 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists the Arri Alexa as having been utilized, and I'm once again assuming things were finished at a 2K DI. With an allowance that some of the CGI in this piece is fairly soft looking, this is a rather striking looking presentation that frequently offers superb detail levels and some vibrant reproduction of a palette that is often bathed either in slate gray and blues or an almost orange tinted yellow. There are a number of frankly silly "POV" shots of shells and the like that almost made me think this must have been released in 3D somewhere, but I couldn't find any substantiating data (as always with my reviews, if someone does have authoritative information, send it along and I'll update the review). A somewhat blanched, wintry appearance in several outdoor sequences tends to make elements like the bright red Nazi flags pop with considerable authority. There are occasional deficits in fine detail and shadow detail in some rather dark (and in some cases, snowy) scenes.

T-34 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

T - 34 features a really nicely "rumbly" DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, though I noticed there was a Dolby Atmos logo on the closing credits crawl (which was otherwise mostly in Cyrillic), and so persnickety types may wonder why that version wasn't included. That said, this is a consistently immersive track, courtesy of elements like well placed (and frequently nicely panning or similarly directional) sounds of shells whizzing through the air and finding their targets. Several "quieter" scenes still include nice representations of ambient environmental effects as well. Dialogue is always presented cleanly and clearly. The film's score was a little hackneyed to my personal taste, but it resides in the surround channels quite winningly.

T-34 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers

  Trailer A (International Version) (1080p; 2:28)

  
  

  Trailer B (English Dub) (1080p; 2:04)

As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to Trailer B after Trailer A plays. After Trailer B plays, the disc moves on automatically to trailers for other Well Go USA Blu-ray releases. Those trailers for other Well Go USA Blu-ray releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Also just a word of warning for those who don't pay attention when they open a keepcase and assume to most easily accessible disc will be the Blu-ray (ahem), my copy came with the Blu-ray disc on the left side (when the case is open) under an insert ad sheet (i.e., the DVD was in the "open" spot on the right).

T-34 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Perhaps because my father was part of the North African campaign, I've always had a fascination for tanks, and anyone with a similar interest will probably find more than enough to engage them here, even if the underlying plot machinations push credibility to the breaking point. Some of the CGI is pretty iffy looking, but generally video is great and the audio is fantastic, for those considering a purchase.