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Tom Cleaver
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Trailer for Russian WW2 flying movie

June 3, 2021 · in News · · 24 · 2.8K

youtu.be/Y-bFbNrkm4Q · on youtube

Released April 29, the feature film "Devyatayev", shot with the participation of the TV channel "Russia 1", . The film tells about the last years of the Great Patriotic War and is based on the real story of the Hero of the Soviet Union Mikhail Devyatayev. Prison camp and a medal for the same act--all too common in Stalin's time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Devyataev

Looks like good CGI to me.

Here's where they steal the He-111 to escape

youtu.be/G_0iSzRVB9Y · on youtube

Reader reactions:
8  Awesome

24 responses

  1. Looks very nice, nicely dramatized, Tom.
    Thanks for sharing!

  2. Looks fantastic and reminds me that I have 3 Russian P-39s to build!

  3. Rammstein singer Till Lindemann featured some of this footage in a recent release, where he sings in Russian (no doubt with thick German accent 😀 )

  4. To my eye the presented air fights have little to do with realism. Russian cinematography is famous for its detached scenes, perhaps with the exception of the "Штрафбат" ("Penal Battalion") series, which I really enjoyed watching. The luftwaffe pilots were not i****s, as they are usually portrayed, and the Bf109, and especially the armored Fw190, did not break apart after one round (it was not a Japanese zero). I am reminded of an equally absurd movie called the T-34 from 2018y. May this production not equal him.

    • Sorry, but it's well-known that a single 37mm hit - whether fired by a P-39 or a MiG-15 - was enough to explode an engine or knock off a wing.

      Also, the armored Fw-190A-8/R2 was not used on the Eastern Front, they stuck to the A6 as long as possible, and the A-8s they used were not the heavily-armored version.

      • I watched this scene probably three times and in my opinion not a single shot was fired from the 37mm cannon. Lead me out of my mistake if I'm wrong 🙂 Besides, I agree that a hit with this type of weapon was final.

        • Lis - when I did my research for MiG Alley, I discovered several instances of F-86s blowing up after one 37mm hit. I didn't count the number fired in this, but "it only takes one." There is also information that the 37mm is what the Russians really liked about the P-39 - at one point there was a plan to lighten the airplane for combat by replacing the 37mm with a 20mm, and the front line pilots convinced them not to.

          Overall, the detail in this movie looks like someone took the time to get things right, so if they did all that I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they did things right here with the gun (the one thing that they got wrong is not having a top turret on the He-111H-22, which is a totally minor point since I doubt there are 10 people who will see it who would know that).

  5. Think the first combat clip was cool enough. Great looking scenes. A few hits from a 37 mm gun could probably take a Fockerschmitt apart. The film Flyboys wasn´t too accurate either...

  6. I have always regretted that at the expense of realism, films were made mainly to make them appealing and spectacular. I watched a really well done air fight in the movie Dunkirk.

    • As someone who has labored in the Hollywood swamps for a long time, I can assure you that "appealing and spectacular" will beat "technical accuracy very very few are aware of" every. single. time.

  7. @tcinla it cannot be denied that you are right. That is why I value individual film gems so much.

  8. It is nice to see a P-39 in a movie like this. When I was a kid, it was mainly P-47, P-51 or a not so good P-40 (Flying Tigers). And P-51 painted up as Me-109's. Or they might have used a Bf-108 acting as a Bf-109. I think this is going to be a pretty interesting movie to watch.

  9. Needs no translation.
    It used to be state sponsored cinema à La Klimov but the theme remains the same.
    For them it is not WW2 . It was survival.
    Not sure if this is true but i was told that in Russian thinking « Peace « means , the period between Wars.
    Thank you for showing this Tom.

    • Given that they essentially live in the middle of a 16-lane freeway used by East and West to invade each other, that concept of "peace" makes perfect sense.

  10. This looks like an interesting movie, Tom (@tcinla). I will have to add this to the movies I saved from the Memorial Day line-up on Turner Classics.

  11. I didn't see any of the nose weaponry, twin 'fifties' or the 37mm cannon used. In fact, I'm not sure if the Russians kept the four 'thirties' in the wing I do see being used. I know they deleted the underwing .50s in the late P-39Q models.

  12. TY for posting this. Think that's the first time I've seen P-39's in a movie. Was neat to hear the russian aerial communication. Shame they didn't put in a shot of the nose with the 37mm & .50's firing.

    Will be forever hopeful that Hollywood churns out an aerial combat movie that's accurate, or at least more accurate, than everything before. Can understand a lot of the stuff before CGI (Using P-51's, Bf108's and T-6's painted up as adversaries) but what floors me is the mistakes being made with CGI. They must be charging by the megapixel.

    • As someone who tried to do that for several years, I can assure you that, outside of whatever combat sequences will be in the Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg "Band of Brothers" Eighth Air Force series now filming that will be on AppleTV in 2023, you will never ever see that movie. For the cost of doing all that CGI, the audience to make it profitable isn't there.

      • Here's to hoping someday they'll break a trend. IMO the big name directors/producers are pretty much the only ones that can force the issue of accuracy/subject with the studio financing departments to make any sort of change at all.

  13. A lot of scenes without cgi. Real planes!

    • Which you can get away with if you're Christopher Nolan. They may have been real planes, but the footage was "enhanced" in post-production.

      If you want to know why it's so expensive and difficult to do a movie with real planes, you should get the Collector's Edition DVD of "Battle of Britain" and take a look at the second disk, where the guys who did the airplane acquisition, flying and filming talk about what they did. It was expensive in 1967 and only moreso today (though you likely wouldn't have to stick 109s in the Hurricane formation to "flesh it out" since there are more than three Hurricanes available these days).

      • You are right some scenes was “enhanced”, but compared to movies with 100% cgi is a notable exception. Admittedly, as I remember, renting a Spitfire, HA-1112 and Heinkel He-111 consumed a significant portion of the budget.

  14. Not worried about the armament depiction. Just assumed it was all coming out the front. Was very happy with the manuevering and showing the stress involved in the high G stuff. And actual situations instead of a giant furball full of swirling looping CG flying machines. Some actual thought went into this. His roll under the bridge, causing the FW to overshoot, shooting an FW off of another Cobra's tail...yeah man. Liked the way he checked his 6 and had his head on a swivel too. Way to stay alive. Somehow excited Russian invective sounds cool too! Can't imagine the exhaustion from this after landing. Gotta see this.

  15. World's longest runway for the He-111 take-off scene.

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