Just so...so bad

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Did they wait for sixteen years after making "Burnt by the sun" to finally give us this film? Did we need to see this? Do they feel they have finally told that epic story that absolutely needed to be told? OK, so what's the story? What have you stuffed into these three hours of film? Well, nothing, really. Nothing happens most of the time. And when something does happen, it is bizarre and over the top. It looks like a film made by a first-time director who is insecure and turns the shock to 11 just to make sure the audience reacts properly, but only ends up creating exaggerated and laughable scenes time and again. I have to admit I didn't even see the whole thing. I had to jump over some of the really boring scenes just to make it until the end. It is that bad.I'll stick to the 1994 film and pretend this pile of rubbish doesn't exist. No, it's still not really bad enough to merit just one star, but I'm giving it anyway, just to show how disappointed I am and how the sequel pales in comparison to the first film. Have you people lost your mind? And I won't even get into a discussion over how historically accurate the film is.Don't watch this, you will only be baffled and irritated.

One of the best war movies. How can we, who have never been there understand war? The madness, the horror. Makes no difference , is it 1943 or 1941 or Afghanistan. I cannot understand war.But I can understand being human. Our frailty,red blood,our dreams, skin and bones. This is what the movie is about. We are not made of symbols such as Motherland, Nazis, Stalin,Communists,Soviets,heroes etc, propaganda is made of symbols.We are made of flesh and blood. War is so crazy we hide from it behind imaginary heroes, historical facts , we want some rational to hide from the madness. This film does not comfort by providing meaning,symbols and chronology, maybe that is why so many bad reviews.

I have to admit I'm a big fan of Mikhalkov's movies as I've seen over 90% of those. A few months ago while reading the previous reviews and especially those 1-star ratings I just couldn't understand. I wasn't able to buy the sequel but I was so intrigued...Such a sensitive, fantastic director can really turn into a trash-maker overnight? I found the answer a month ago after buying the DVD. No, Mikhalkov is not a worse director now! I won't discuss the political context of his recent life, I'm interested only in his movies. Burnt by the Sun 2 is a powerful one, full of Mikhalkov's(read Russian) joy, melancholy and wonderful hyperbola. I agree this is a more commercial movie than the previous Burnt by the Sun but it still has a great soul. And those "historical inadvertences" claimed by some readers can be solved very easy. I'm a WWII scholar with hundreds of books under my belt. Yes, the shtraf batallions didn't exist back in 1941 but during the same summer the Germans entering USSR were encountering what they referred to as Black Divisions. Who were they? They were convicts released from Gulag or from other prisons together with convicted captains, colonels or generals as part of the Second Strategic Echelon of the Red Army. Anyway, watch Burnt by the Sun 2... you'll discover at least one epic scene, a landmark of war genre movies! The watch is ticking :)

Utomlyonnye solntsem 2: Predstoyanye (Burnt by the Sun: Anticipation) is the sequel to Nikita Mikhalkov's exceptional 1994 period drama about Stalin's political repressions in the 1930s. However, a lot of water has passed under the bridge in 15 years and the poignancy of the original is certainly lost here.This film follows the struggles of the repressed Kotov family and the man who is responsible for their plight through the Soviet theater of WW2. The plot is neither simple enough to be called a drama nor expansive enough to be an epic. Instead its a picaresque flow of vignettes reminiscent of a play - the majority of scenes have retained the original film's intimacy, with few actors on screen at the same time.In terms of direction I was impressed in places, though mostly by technical skill rather than revelatory plot devices or subtle acting. The restrained use of sound effects and music that worked so well in the first film is definitely one of this sequel's redeeming features.On a less positive note, I was exasperated by the treatment of suffering Mikhalkov offers his audience - many characters spend their entire screen time whimpering, crying or cowering in the rubble - not exactly the Tears and Glory that many have come to expect from the genre. We can only hope the Glory will come in the third film (we are, after all, in Anticipation).As an actor Nikita Mikhalkov is accomplished and energetic as always, but the show is easily stolen by Sergei Makovetsky, gingerly portraying a sympathetic SMERSH officer stuck in a catch 22, as well as Mikhalkov's promising daughter Nadya as a tormented young Pioneer lost in the landscape of war. I should note that Makovetsky recently starred in the considerably more engaging WW2 saga "The Priest" and is on something of a roll lately.Despite the overall quality of the cast the direction takes an unusual approach to a number of performers - Dmitriy Dyuzhev of Brigada fame, for example, spends the entire film whimpering unconvincingly - something he was obviously never designed for. Oleg Menshikov, a fine period actor many will know for playing Yerast Fandorin in 'Statski Sovetnik", is no more or less wooden than grandma's kitchen ladle - it seems Mikhalkov was simply uninterested in engaging this actor.Considering how much money was spent, production values are quite low in places - props often seem lonely on battlefields and costumes lack imagination. Perhaps most of it went to the actors that managed to cozy up to this lucrative gig... In any case, a number of scenes feel cheap and give the entire production an air of inconsistency.Last but not least, it would be a shame not to mention Mikhalkov's own fate. Most foreigners will be unaware of the fact that in the 15 years since the release of the original movie, Mikhalkov has become a close friend and associate of a leader himself accused of political repression - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. I would have no qualms with this ordinarily, assuming that all the funds his efforts raised were spent making great movies. Unfortunately, Mikhalkov's tenure as figurehead of Russia's film industry did not produce many quality films. Certainly, none by Mikhalkov himself.The bottom line: a sequel unworthy of its predecessor in almost every way, but good enough to own on DVD or watch with the family.