Beast war

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Movie
German title Beast war
Original title The Beast
Country of production United States
original language English / Pashto
Publishing year 1988
length 111 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Kevin Reynolds
script William Mastrosimone
production Gil Friesen ,
Dale Pollock
music Mark Isham
camera Douglas Milsome
cut Peter Boyle
occupation

Beast War is a US-American film from 1988. It is about the crimes and fate of a Soviet T-55 tank crew during the first Afghan war . The crew consists of four Soviets, Daskal (commander), Koverchenko, Golikov, Kaminski and an Afghan fellow soldier (Samad).

action

In 1981 , Soviet soldiers raided a Pashtun village and eliminated the Afghan fighters who were there. However, after the women of the village attack the tanks with sticks and stones, they are not spared either. In the course of the battle, one of the Afghan fighters managed to take out one of the tanks with a Molotov cocktail . To punish him and to deter further attacks, Daskal - who also served in World War II - orders Koverchenko to roll over the now defenseless, disarmed man with a tank. Before the soldiers leave the village, it is burned down and the well is poisoned with cyanide .

On the march back, the tank is separated from the main force and begins an odyssey through the hinterland unknown to the Soviet soldiers. In addition, they are hunted by the surviving fighters of the village, which was devastated at the beginning. As the story progresses, tensions between the commanding officer and Koverchenko intensify and escalate after the commandant shoots Koverchenko's friend Samad on suspicion of espionage. Since Koverchenko threatens the commandant to bring him to a court martial and wants to wrest the command away from him by force of arms, he is unceremoniously tied up and left to die in no man's land.

Due to his - albeit limited - Pashtun vocabulary, Koverchenko succeeds in preventing the mob that has found him from killing him. Instead, he invokes an old custom which gives even the worst enemy a right to mercy . Driven by his hatred of his former commanding officer, he now helps the Afghans to track the tank and destroy it towards the end of the film.

But instead of murdering his former comrades in cold blood, as they had planned for him, he lets them go and asks his new allies to refrain from revenge. Nevertheless, a mob made up of women manages to catch up with Daskal on his escape and beat him to death. Golikov and Kaminski manage to escape. After the women Koverchenko admit their deed with a smug smile, Koverchenko realizes that some Afghans do not differ in their inhuman behavior from that of his commanding officer. So he finally decided to go back to the Soviet side and let himself be flown out by an approaching helicopter .

Reviews

  • Cinema describes the film as a "simple cliché version of the war in Afghanistan."
  • Lexicon of international film : “Hard war film with adventurous features, which is less about an analysis of the political situation than about an exemplary treatment of the dehumanization caused by the war; the clichéd formal implementation leaves an ambivalent impression. "

 

additional

The film begins with an excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's poem The Young British Soldier:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your God like a soldier.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beast War. cinema.de, accessed on September 27, 2008 .
  2. ↑ Beast War. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used