9th Company

This was on film4 the other week and I taped because it sounded interesting and IMD gave it a pretty good rating. Basically it follows a group of Russian recruits through their training for and during a tour of Afghanistan during the 80’s. The film’s in Russian so you have to put up with the subtitles but you soon get sucked into it all and I thought it was a really good film in the end. The Russian war over there is an area of history I’ve practically no knowledge of, and while the plot focuses more on the soliders point of view rather than big picture, I was interested to learn at the end that it was based a true story.

Overall I’d rate it a respectable 7 or 8 out of 10, no saving private ryan, but much better than Jarhead which came out the same year as this.

I doubt it’ll be readily available in the UK, but you might be able to pick it up off torrents (just be sure to find english subtitles).