Good concept, poorly executed.

An absolute waste of money

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The siege of Leningrad is a such a significant part of WWII History that it deserves a good film. There haven't been enough Western movies made about the suffering of the Russians in WWII. We all know "Enemy at the Gates" which is a thriller action war movie that deals with heroic soldiers but not the suffering of the people.This turned out to be an example of a movie that could have done with a Hollywood touch to tighten the script and bring a story into focus with interesting characters. The story doesn't flow properly. Mira Sorvino and Gabriel Byrne both seem like fish out of water here.The photography of the city is so limited. They couldn't even manage some arial shots of the city and its landmarks to give an on location feel.The English dubbing of the characters is terrible with everyone sounding alike.Don't bother with this movie. It's terrible.

One of the stories of WWII that has always deserved a lot more attention than it has usually gotten is the Siege of Leningrad. The Nazis blockaded the city, cutting it off from the outside world for over two years. Over a million Leningraders perished, mainly due to starvation. Aleksandr Buravsky's "Attack on Leningrad" is set amid this atrocity. It focuses on an English journalist (Mira Sorvino) caught in the city when the Nazis blockade it, although the main focus is her relationships with people in an apartment building as they all struggle to survive.A previous review criticized the movie for concentrating more on the journalist than on the horror that the city experienced. Maybe that's true, but I still thought that it was a good movie. Obviously it can't accurately depict the tragedy that Leningrad suffered, but it does still look at this important part of history. At least that's my interpretation.

What a disappointment .... This SHOULD have been a great film, with such a topic, it should have been a great epic. Instead , we get a rather formulaic and simple minded romance story, so devoid of feeling for the historical complexity of this vast tragedy, that it comes across as an insult to the memory of all those millions who suffered and died here. The story of a stranded British war correspondent (Sorvino) and her lover (Byrne), which apparently is based on true events, would have worked as a subtext; a sideline to the larger human events transpiring, but, Hollywood-style, it takes front and centre, while the Russian People are largely relegated to roles as stereotyped KGB bad guys or masses of faceless ragamuffins dragging coffin-laden sledges along windy alleyways. None of the great players are fleshed out in this mess ... Zhdanov, whose heroic efforts saved so many, is shown only in passing, while Stalin, whose bad decisions led to the siege of Leningrad, is not even mentioned.Sorvino, who, even when looking withered and starved, still has the cutest smiles in film history, tries desperately to bring some life to this, but is defeated by her desperate attempt to affect a British accent, amid the generally poor direction. The other big-name actors don't even try, as they are handed only bit parts.After this, and "The Barber of Siberia", I'm coming to the conclusion that any Russian film with western actors should be avoided like the plague. A Pity. If you want to see a great Russian film about WW2, see Tarkovski's early film, "The Childhood of Ivan", or Elem Klimov's "Come and See". If you want to know something about the siege of Leningrad read Harrison Salisbury's harrowing epic, "The 900 Days". The movie's not a total bomb, It may be worth watching if you're a Russian film buff like myself, or might be enjoyable, if you know nothing about the siege of Leningrad ... It's just an immense disappointment, compared to what it should have been.

The heroic defense of the city of Leningrad and the superhuman endurance of its citizens during one of the worst sieges in history, is beautifully depicted in the stunning, heartbreaking film "Leningrad", written and directed by Alexandr Buravsky.I have been teaching a Film History course at Indiana State University for over 25 years and happened to be in London on the day the film was screened. What luck! Kate is a foreign journalist who misses her plane and is forced to survive in the besieged city. She's both an outsider (English) and an insider (of Russian descent). Caught between the Soviet apparatchiks who refuse to give up Leningrad matter the cost and the Germans who are hell-bent on conquering it, Kate, for the first time in her life is faced with a choice – survive or die. She chooses the latter, helping others survive in the process. The transformation she goes through and the final choice that she makes, will make even the strongest among us cry. Yet the film is fiercely, stubbornly unsentimental, which is one of its great strengths. It's not just a film about what the Russian people had to endure during the almost nine hundred-day siege; it's an honest, authentic testament to the triumph of the soul in the face of unspeakable adversities.My only regret is that "Leningrad" is not playing in the U.S theaters. I sincerely hope that North American distributors get a chance to view this powerful movie and appreciate it not only for its emotional gravity and entertainment value, but for its commercial possibilities as well. This may be the year of "Avatar", but for all its technical brilliance, Cameron's film couldn't hold a candle to Buravsky's.