Powerful

Good concept, poorly executed.

Better Late Then Never

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

This film together with series No.2 of the same, is a great humanistic film about the blockade of Leningrad by German army during 1941 -1943.This is a story of fighter pilots defending Leningrad and citizens of same city under blockade where more than a half million citizens died because of hunger. Such a tragedy is so immense and would no way to describe it fully and exactly but can only be symbolized in some ways as in this film.Actress Lyudmila Gurchenko, who took a roll of young girl in Leningrad and also a volunteer for helping citizens, show her excellent ability to show a young girl's unbreakable dream even in such a desperate situation. She showed her superb ability as a musical comedy actress in the film "Carnival Night" (Soviet Film of 1956), and here she showed her another ability to take a dramatic and symbolic roll.Also this film might be a rare case for actor Michael Ulyanov who took part of a fighter pilot, since he later regularly took part of Soviet Army General Georgy Jukov in numerous Super scale Soviet WWII films.