5 Days of War (2011)

5 Days of War: Directed by Renny Harlin. With Rupert Friend, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Richard Coyle, Heather Graham. A drama set centered around the war between Russia and Georgia, and focused on an American journalist, his cameraman, and a Georgian native who become caught in the crossfire.

“Well, all kinds of things went wrong with this movie.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFor starters, the opening sequence is awesome. One thing this movie really had was best camera crew ever. Everything feels very intense all the times, very close to the real war footage. Also, all the props, vehicles, uniforms, even explosions look very real. This is the good part.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe mediocre part is main story. Itu0026#39;s a mix of Hotel Rwanda and Tears of the Sun, but feels like a bootleg version, a cheap knockoff of those.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnd then thereu0026#39;s the bad part. Just after awesome intro, you get u0026quot;treatedu0026quot; with shots of Tbilisi, with landmarks, people smiling, and god forbid, trancey music in the background. It looked like a commercial for some travel agency, with only u0026quot;Visit Georgiau0026quot; message missing from the scene and was most tasteless thing Iu0026#39;ve ever seen in a film. I live in similar post-soviet country and I do understand the mentality in desperate desire to explain your culture to the world to get less looked as some remote hellhole, but this is outright tasteless and maybe Georgia hasnu0026#39;t come to this yet. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe script had generally no direction. Awesome war scene here, some corpses there, cameramen and photography director knew what to do… But director didnu0026#39;t. First, that simple shot with church and bloody river from u0026#39;Tears of the Sunu0026#39; gives 10 times stronger emotion than whole pile of bodies shown in u0026#39;5 days of Augustu0026#39;. Even though latter tries sooo hard to portray Russians as savages.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSecond, despite awesome camera and props, fighting had no point in this movie. You see soldiers shooting stuff and each other, but itu0026#39;s unclear why or whatu0026#39;s their plan. I donu0026#39;t think any people who had any idea about how soldiers and military works were on the set. Mi-24 choppers shooting random buildings with rockets? And here I thought that every pilot is given orders and targets to waste expensive munitions on… Also, MI-24 sports a deadly cannon, but itu0026#39;s used only once, missing everything, and soldiers act as chopper had blind men for pilot and gunner, not taking cover. Tanks constantly missing targets and not using machine guns? Taking down a chopper with a single LAW rocket? SU-bombers taking down a restaurant residing in basically nowhere? This all felt very bizarre and pointless.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI could go on, but thereu0026#39;s no need. Letu0026#39;s just say that this movie is very average, has some good moments, lots of unmemorable moments, and some outright stupid ones. So pick it up from bargain bin, but donu0026#39;t expect too much.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e6 stars I give are for 2 reasons: Awesome camera work (it felt like live action at places) and the fact that despite being incredibly dumb, this movie IS entertaining… and thatu0026#39;s good, even if itu0026#39;s for all wrong reasons.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e…as for amount of propaganda, this movie is 100% okay, considering what comes from Moscow. Sure itu0026#39;s all bloated and overrated but this is how we rock in those former USSR satellite countries. Even 50 of such movies canu0026#39;t counter a single evening news show from random Russian TV-channel. For westerners, you just have to accept that rules are different, but watching all those Normandy landings in every Hollywood movie and video game, maybe not as much as you might think.”