Review by Gary Tooze

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Description: Based on real-life events, 9th COMPANY recounts a year in the shared lives of a group of young soldiers drafted to serve in Afghanistan during the final year of the Soviet conflict. It is a poignant story of the unit s dedication to each other during their valiant defense of Height 3234...a futile battle that ravaged their forgotten company, who fought on, unaware that the war had ended.

Reminiscent of Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and The Big Red One, 9th COMPANY is credited as being the first real post-Soviet era war film.

The highest grossing film in Russia in 2005 at $27 million, 9th COMPANY also won a NIKA Award for Best Film and marks the feature directorial debut of Fyodor Bondarchuk, son of renowned director Sergei Bondarchuk War and Peace, 1968.

 

 

The Film:

Excerpt from Angus Wolfe Murray at Eye For Film located HERE

Image :    NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.
 

9th Company has a stylistically rich look on Blu-ray from Well Go USA. Colors border saturation and there seems abundantly heavy reds and blues in certain scenes - possibly filtered. I don't doubt the 1080P image has been transferred accurately but I'm not the biggest fan of this appearance.  To me, it often looks falsely sharp but I couldn't detail and egregious edge-enhancements. It just looks kind of 'faux' at times. Contrast is quite strong. I expect that most won't have an issue with the appearance and it can look occasionally impressive. I just never found it 'realistic' but, as I say, this was probably the cinematographic intention. The Blu-ray is single-layered with a moderate bitrate but you can tell it is HD as there is some depth and detail in close-ups far outweighs what SD could export. Maybe I'm being hyper-critical.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We've seen this type of 'screw-up' before. Firstly neither 2 options are lossless. The god-awful English DUB is 5.1 (and default) and the original Russian in a simple 2.0 channel stereo. The DUB is laughable in the voice characterizations and poorly synched. Being a 'war' film with explosions, gunfire and the like both a deft lossless track with bona-fide separations would have greatly benefited some of the action sequences. The Russian stereo track isn't fatally poor - there is some notable bass depth - but it just seems like a valuable waste of the new format not going lossless. Thankfully the optional subtitles aren't 'DUBtitles' (stuff dubbed as 'Get out of the way homey!' is more adeptly translated). My Momitsu has identified it as being a region FREE disc playable on Blu-ray machines worldwide.

 

DVD (extras)

 

BOTTOM LINE:
I can appreciate 9th Company in some respects but overall it wasn't as impacting as I would have hoped for. Much of the film's 'feel' seems contrived and over-the-top (this would be even more true if you viewed with the English DUB) but on the positive I watched it closely and till the conclusion. Yes - absolutely it can remind you of Full Metal Jacket... however, obviously, in Afghanistan. I am glad I saw it as I had heard about it a few years back - perhaps I was expecting too much. The Blu-ray does a decent job of supporting the video of the film experience although I was disappointed in limitations of the audio transfer. It's a typical heavy-handed war film but there are some nice subtle touches thrown in but it felt very long to me. This isn't a recommendation but I'm sure many will enjoy it more than I did. 

Gary Tooze

August 30th, 2010