recommended

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Fantastic!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

If you like adventure, risk, some violence, sort-of slapstick humor, and you don't mind the propaganda(see the next paragraph), then this would be a good movie for you. The quality of the film is also not bad. There are some beautiful places, but mostly it's just the thrill of not knowing(or knowing)what comes next.This movie was made in 1967, so of course it has to be full of soviet propaganda to be "allowed". You see the bad "whites", and the good "reds" (the Russians were divided into supporters of the tsar, whites, the people who hated the tsar, reds, and those stuck in the middle), but if you ignore this, the movie is actually great. If you just imagine that the "whites" are some random bad army, and that everyone else is good, then you can sit back and enjoy the movie. You also just naturally forget most of the political part and start just wishing luck to the boys, and girl, who play the main parts.

My feelings while watching this movie? Guilty pleasure from observing this completely stupid, deceitful, calculated workpiece. Movie is full of Bolshevik ideology disguised as entertainment, fun and thrill, it steals aesthetics, situations, dialogues, characters and actions from westerns. Each villain wears no black top-hat and cutaway but Cossack uniform. Lively scenes are interlaced with idyllic takes or "profound" chit-chat - spectacular sentences pronounced by twelve year kids. Aim of this movie? Nothing more and nothing other than brainwashing. Copingstone - heroes riding away into giant, sanguine falling sun - made me laugh.

Granted, I have a hard time being objective about Soviet films. Growing up as a descendant of a White Army officer forced to flee to China (probably during the time this film was set)... I was raised with an equally vitriolic version (but in reverse) of brainwashing about how the godless red revolutionaries terrorized and took the country. After studying Russian/Soviet history, I can see that it was somewhere in between. And one can come to understand why oppressed classes or people being pogromed/killed - might try to do something about it. I can understand the ideals some may have aspired too, even as I understand the human cost and that this revolt of the workers did not work out as idealistically.So it's with a strange sense of fascination that I watch Soviet films, especially the overtly political ones. In the ones that deal with the civil war, these films often portray the evil bourgeois "whites" as sadistic, selfish, at worst or inept, uncaring nobles who live parasitically off the workers.And to be fair this film does not demonize the "whites" as much as other "patriotic Soviet" films I've seen. The White Army is not shown flatteringly, but not as badly as I've seen in other films. Sidor is shown to have pity on the kid and other orphans and even attempts to explains to him why his father had to die. The priests are not all shown as superistious, hypocritical, drunken louts (OK, 1 was - but the other was shown as OK). The villagers and even the "red" kids still wore crosses -- so religion was not shown as the terrible 'opiate of the masses'. Instead of fully demonizing the 'whites', the film chose to put the "red" children on a heroic pedestal and showing the goodness and righteousness of the "reds". The proudly zealot children fighting the good fight against all odds and winning. They're finally rewarded by getting to join the Red Army. (You'll note the Red Army is not shown drinking - but singing wholesome songs around the accordion!) In the embrace of the ideal of equality: A girl is allowed to break gendered norms and become a good soldier - And a gypsy is welcomed as an equal. (Russians are used to homogeneity and are not used to embracing diversity as well as some of us are used to.)This also has to have the distinction of being one of the very very few Russian films that was not just a study in pure abject despair. I was shocked that not everyone died horrible (but noble!) deaths at the end! Anyway, not recommended to most people. But if you want to practice your Russian, like watching these kinds of "repositioning of history" or if you enjoy watching silly patriotic films (we Americans certainly have a ton of "US v. THEM" where we are perfect and they are pure evil (read: Communists, Germans/Japanese, Arabs, etc. depending on our time frame).... then by all means... you may enjoy.