I wasn't going bother with this one but the opening is a bolter with WW2 Tank Commander Alexander Petrov (in Luc Besson’s Anna) evading German Panzer fire on his kitchen truck. (“The turret has to turn”) While it’s clearly all process work, the subsequent battle between the demoralised remnant Russian tank unit he takes over, asserting his authority as a freshly military academy graduated officer, and the German armor column that grossly out numbers it, is as good as anything of its kind I’ve seen. I felt like cheering the Ruskies and they don't demonise the Germans either.
Petrov gets to be P.O.W. ”The Tankman”, famous for seven escape attempts and refusing to give his name and rank, before his prison transport train rolls into the concentration camp where he’s scheduled for extermination. It is of course raining and I was waiting for a prisoner orchestra when, sure enough, a tracking revealed one. The new arrivals are ordered by the Stalag Commander to prostrate themselves in the mud, with only one one remaining erect, despite the threat of immediate execution relayed by bilingual translator girl Irina Starshenbaum (Michael Wintertbotham’s Shoshana) who anyone who has seen these knows is going to take off that head scarf before the end of the picture.
T-34 - Alexander Petrov
However Petrov's German opposite number from the opening battle, Vinzenz Kiefer, (Uli Edel’s Der Baader Meinhof Komplex) now suitably scar faced and embittered, has been commissioned to mount a training exercise for the local junge soldier unit using a captured latest model Russian tank as target. With the prospect of Kiefer putting a round into the translator girl if he acts up, Petrov agrees to take command of the vehicle. Of course his old crew are in the inmate ranks when he has to recruit and he immediately picks them out, including the one that spits on him. However the trucked-in Russian tank, they can all smell from a distance, still has the rotting bodies of the operators. Demanding that they be permitted to give them a decent burial, Petrov’s lot discover that there is live tank ammunition inside the foul odored machine, which their captors refuse to enter.
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| Director Aleksey Sidorov & Vinzenz Kiefer (Center) |
We’ve already moved from suspense drama into Boy’s Own action but this one can more than hold its own with The Wooden Horse, The Great Escape, The Beast, Wolf Warrior or Fury all of which offer some of its elements. Forget The Treasure of Kalifa! The pleasure of watching several tons of armament gyrating to the strains of Swan Lake and crushing a yard of polished Mercedeses is to come. The final action material is as good as the opening and more than compensates for the slackening of pace in the camp material. We’ve got some bare assed bathing, which will look good in the trailer, computer simulated drone shots, some passable romantic material and a couple of nice bits of comedy with the tank petrifying German housewives waiting on a bus stop and compliant local townspeople, before we get to the big action finale
The logistics, much humiliating of beastly Nazis and the tension in the expert action material all make this one superior, if enthusiastically violent, entertainment. The copy is excellent. I enjoyed T-34 and it makes me curious about the rest of Sidorov’s extensive filmography but then I’m not Ukrainian.
T-34 is a remake of Nikita Kurikhin & Leonid Menaker’s admired 1965 Zavoronok, which is available with dodgy subtitling at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9D0OMe3QiA&t=4928s
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| T-34 - Bus Stop, Irina Starshenbaum at right. |
Barrie Pattison 2025
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