User Reviews

In 1945, in the end of the World War II, the Russian war hero Ignat (Vladimir Mashkov) is sent to a Siberian labor camp of collaborationist to work as mechanic of the locomotive that transports wood. Ignat has a concussion that makes him lose consciousness and loves locomotives, but is not allowed to be a driver. Ignat meets the Russian Sofia (Yuliya Peresild) that has a German boy named Pashka and he has a love affair with her. When Ignat learns that there is an abandoned locomotive in the woods, he decides to repair the vehicle. But he finds the aggressive German girl Elsa (Anjorka Strechel) living aboard of the train that tries to protect her abode. But Elsa ends teaming up with Ignat and helping him to fix the locomotive and repair of the bridge to cross the river. When Ignat returns to the labor camp, he has a love affair with the outcast Elsa and Sofia is jealous of her. They both are outcast and Ignat and his locomotive "Gustav" are rejected by the dwellers and lives with Elsa in the train. But when the cruel Major Fishman (Sergey Garmash) arrives in the camp, their lives will not be the same again.

"Kray" is a movie with a different story about the lives of persons considered collaborationist by Stalin living in a Siberian labor camp. The relationship among the dwellers is weird since most of the men are alcoholics and the women are promiscuous. It is impressive and also comprehensible the hatred of the inhabitants of the camp and the German Elsa. Movies of the World War II are usually about the Holocaust or the bravery of Americans in the war and it is great the chance to see the fate of these people in the post-war. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Expresso Da Morte" ("Express Train of the Death")

Ignat is a Soviet veteran who arrives in a remote village to be responsible for the railway line. Treated as a war hero, it awakens the hatred and admiration of those who reside there, foreigners who have the "opportunity" to work for Mother Russia. Formerly a machinist, now he can not touch the locomotives because of his frequent convulsions. This fact is what awaken the first uncomfortable situation upon your arrival.

Thus Ignat takes over the main locomotive, causing the silent fury of his former machinist - one of the strangers in the village. Motivated by this event, Elsa breaks with her boyfriend, the machinist, and seduces Ignat. When questioned, she responds that she needs a real man to take care of her and that Ignat has proved himself better in two situations about his former companion, which puts him as a stronger man.

The climate in the village, more like a forced labor camp, gets worse. Ignat awakens fear as it imposes itself. By putting a locomotive in its maximum effort, it ends up damaging it and causing the locals to get injured - the fuse for Ignat to reach the end of the rails.

These rails lead to a river and what was left of a bridge. Just as he finds an old abandoned powerful locomotive, because of the broken bridge. Ignat focuses on recovering the train and ends up meeting a savage savage who does not speak his language. The discovery of this girl causes discomfort in the village as Ignat tries to help her. Together they will face the challenge of trying to get the train to work, finding a way to reestablish the bridge and face the village's fury.

The photography and the direction are okay, they fulfill their role and they hit on some good passages. The performances also follow this line, do not compromise and at one time or another crown with good performances. The script is original and approaches intelligently, it sins to be losing a bit in the middle of the story and almost recovers.

Kray is a film that portrays a delicate moment in Russia, a time when locomotives were worth more than people and people were disposable or untouchable, without the middle ground. The war hero is put in check as a critique of exacerbated nationalism and the magic that surrounds Stalin's sympathizers. The Soviet lobotomy is cruel and imposing. Movie that ends up being interesting by its novelty, without sounding with strangeness.

This film clearly aims to present the immediate post-WWII Russian/Soviet landscape in a way that is not breathtakingly new, but satisfyingly authentic for middlebrow audiences, East and West. In this way, it reminds most of the Finno-Russian production, "The Cuckoo." The heroes are not larger than life, no better than they need to be (when the Russian heroine is asked why she prefers the newly arrived hero to her former lover, she answers, "because he has more of the devil in him"); the national prejudices create tension, project an atmosphere of cruelty, even brutality among characters who clearly have a stake in reaching mutual understanding. The cold is palpable, as is the primitive living conditions. No wonder the power and beauty of the locomotives provide romanticism and sense of adventure for all.

A large part of the suspense comes from just trying to figure out the back story and the relationships among the characters. The political atmosphere is understated enough, I think, so thoughtful audiences have something to "read between the lines," and those who want an adrenaline rush will not be disappointed.

Just after World War II, Ignat, a Soviet war hero, arrives at a Gulag camp in a remote section of Siberia, in order to try to handle a steam locomotive that is there. Soon he takes as his lover one of the prisoners, the pretty Sofia. Eventually, Ignat is told another locomotive is in an uninhabited forbidden island in a lake near the camp. When he goes to recover the locomotive, he finds a wild girl is living there, a German named Elsa who has been hiding there since the war started and the Russians killed her family (she is played by the pretty German actress Anjorka Strechel; unfortunately, it's hard to see her beauty in the movie since most of the time she is covered in dirt and dressed with shabby clothes). Ignat brings Elsa back to the camp in the broken locomotive, and soon sparks will fly between Elsa and Sofia for the love of Ignat. Since I love trains and snowy forests, I should have like this more, but it is hurt by very arbitrary plot points and a weak script. The train motif here seems a bit thrown in (why is there a train in the camp, anyway). I don't know if the portrayal of the Gulag camp is realistic, but in the movie it doesn't look as such a terrible place (when, in fact, hundreds of thousands of people if not millions die in the Gulag camps for otherwise treatable illnesses, malnutrition, exposure to the elements, etc.). Lots of Russian machismo in the movie as well, with the male characters hitting each other hard at the faintest of motives. The movie most memorable scene, that finally makes it worth watching, is a nude cat fight between Elsa and Sofia, with all the other naked woman in the camp watching.

You have to give credit to the director and the team of stunt-men for incredible steam engine races but on the whole the plot is not believable. The most impossible thing of course is four- year survival of a German girl in the Siberian taiga. How she did it is a mystery which I can only explain by the director's plan to shoot a prequel next year.

The list goes on - the main hero's girlfriend lives in a barrack with dozens of other exiled women who all sleep in bunks in one large room but she, miraculously, has a tiny bedroom all for herself and her lover. How she pulled this one off in the Gulag, I do not know.

The main hero is such a hero, he makes steam engines fly over a pretty wide river, tender and all, when he realizes that a bridge he tried to repair is unsafe for crossing.

There is a fair dose of what directors - Russian or foreign ones - think should be in a film about Russia. The most glaring example in "The Edge" is a bear walking the streets of a settlement and doing mischief among the inhabitants. There is plenty of moonshine and Stalin's portraits. There is a Russian steam bath filled with naked women whose bodies look remarkably appetizing for the inhabitants of the Gulag. I was surprised that there was nobody playing the harmonica under the branches of a cranberry tree.

But like I said, if you are a fan of locomotives, go and watch this movie!

I will not get into details about the movie itself - I like it a lot obviously. I will just try to answer some of the questions raised by some of the people that gave relatively low grade as they obviously did not understand a lot about the movie (probably due to bad subtitles or lack of enough attention) which I, being someone with good understanding in Russian and having quite good Bulgarian subtitles, have noticed:

-This is not a Gulag! This is free labor camp - much different. People there are not imprisoned, are being cared about (clothed, fed relatively good and not harassed to death) while working for the state for something (wood harvesting and transporting I think). The idea is there the "spoiled" collaborationists to be reformed in the right attitude and habits for the "new" society.

• There is a train in the camp as this is the end of the railroad, this is the last station (hence the pun in the title "Kray" which in English means "End"). The locomotive is needed for keeping the railroad clean from snow during the winter and for transporting the harvested wood (second clearly seen in the movie and the first also explained in the film).

• The hitting is not without a reason, but it will take more than couple of lines to explain why for each case. Probably it is hard to understand for people that are not acquainted with the Russian/Soviet "Great Motherland war" (I am not sure if the translation is officially correct though) and the attitude of the whole nation towards the German invaders and the people who supported, helped or even tolerated them (especially men), especially from people who fought on the front.

• "the main hero's girlfriend" is allowed separate room as she is the only one in the camp with a child - this is explicitly explained by her in the beginning of the movie and once again - this is not a Gulag! Please pay more attention before writing.

• About the train over the bridge - it is not something physically impossible. In fact the approach of rushing through an unstable construction instead of going slowly over it makes quite a sense - you pass through it in very short time before it has time to collapse and the inertia you have also helps. If you go slowly - you crush it under your weight.

Overall, I believe that the atmosphere and the "flavor" of the time add the place is captured very well, and the characters are very realistic. I like Russian cinema a lot and probably being Bulgarian who grew during the socialist times and had to learn Russian since lower grades (now I don't regret this) helps me to understand and "feel"better their movies and what they are trying to say. So the movie for me is very, very good and kept me under it's impression for several days (still does). I highly recommend it, especially to people from Eastern Europe.

I hope this review helps someone:)

There is little about THE EDGE that is not extremely well done. The setting and props are authentic and make you want to pull up a blanket to keep Siberia out. The photography and editing are topnotch; e.g., no lazy cameras, obnoxious close-ups, etc. All characters act according to their described circumstances. I'd bet the script is great but of course I was limited to subtitles. But the most intriguing item about THE EDGE is the plot; i.e., the storyline. Arguably the tale twists but whatever such may be the two lead characters are single-minded and riveted to their goals. The IMDb (and I assume the film's) poster picture is misleading as it suggests some superhero-like character with a Transformer-sized train. Such is decidedly NOT the case. However, the actual train devise becomes even more thrilling because of a plot predicament I won't give away. If I haven't already said so the male and female leads give awesome performances. I rarely gush so much about a movie but how THE EDGE slipped under the critics radar baffles me. Doctor Zhivago has nothing on this film. I predict great things for Anjorka Strechel.

I liked the movie because it has a post-war reality did not know. It's a different story where there is no hero or villain. It is a story that only interests the Russian people, but it was worth watch also liked the photo and the performance of the actors. also which I thought was cool is to have been in the Russian Ligua, as if it had been Dubbed into English would not be fun. I also agree with the issue of title having nothing to do with the movie, but I imagine that the company released the film in Brazil, I wanted to give a title to call attention, without worrying about the consistency of the Portuguese title with history. This is common in American movies.

Very good film with very good actors, the love story between the protagonist and the German woman is very moving, not at all sugary, two crippled by the war learn to love and respect each other. The scene of the restoration of the bridge for the abandoned train to cross is breathtaking and will remain etched in my mind for a long time. But there are some details that I didn't like. We see a camp where they are people who were supposed collaborators of the Germans. What do these people eat? They fish, they kill animals and eat them, they cultivate but where can you cultivate with so much snow all around, where do they find the coal to run the trains? They don't give us details about life in the camp. Who brings them food and supplies? When the protagonist arrives at the camp there are 2 trains running and he also brings the abandoned train and there are 3 trains. 3 trains are moving up and down the tracks, people are racing, laughing, having fun but what are they doing? They don't show anyone driving the train for serious work eg going to a neighboring town to bring supplies, bring coal, working seriously. The protagonist takes the train, leaves, comes, leaves again, comes again, what exactly does he do? Does he just travel back and forth on the rails? We don't see him doing a specific job. Racing and fun is not a serious reason for running trains. I think the writer should have explained more about life in the camp and the purpose of the trains moving back and forth. Despite the objections, the film is worth seeing, it is very good.

A Russian man, a German woman, and a German child abandoned in the war, ice and snow, desperate. Hungry to swallow game, thirsty to drink snow. There are no Germans or gendarmerie, but they have to face Stalin who is more cruel than the two. The weather in Siberia is like a drunken man who is happy, and the three are willing to hide in Tibet. Fortunately, there is no way out in the world, and the hope of rebirth despises the muzzle of the pursuer. Rough Russian style, like the woman said, like a man! I really hope that this cold wind blows to China and blows the feminine femininity of those sissies out of my mind! It is rough and brutal on the outside, but the emotions of the hero and heroine are delicate! Love the style!

World War II has been one of the most common subjects in cinema for the past seven decades. Practically every country involved in that six-year conflict has made movies about it, including Russia. One example is Aleksey Uchitel's "Kray" ("The Edge" in English), Russia's submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Most of the movie is set in the aftermath of WWII, in a Siberian camp for Soviet troops who had been POWs in Germany, now sent to the camp for "re-education". One of the people there is war hero Ignat, who had wrecked a train. But when he ventures out on a hunch, Ignat finds what could be a new path in life...even if it angers the commissar.

To me, the trains represent the struggles that the people in the Soviet Union had endured under Nazi occupation, but also the understanding that the way forward was not going to be an easy task. While the movie doesn't have the intellectual profundity of some Russian movies that I've seen, it does make clear that mere suspicion of collaboration with the Germans could have dire consequences. It's not a masterpiece, but I like how it develops the characters, especially Elsa.

Other Russian movies about WWII that I recommend are "The Cranes Are Flying", "Cuckoo" and "Our Own".