Attack on Leningrad DVD, 2007

Attack on Leningrad is a gritty, unflinching war drama about the notorious siege, which lasted for more than two years and played a pivotal part in World War Two.

Beginning with a barrage of bloodshed that recalls Saving Private Ryan, the film quickly establishes its historical premise: the Nazis will try to break the will of the people by blocking food supplies to the city. In days, Leningrad should be on its knees. Mira Sorvino plays a journalist who's stranded in the city as the blockade begins; Gabriel Byrne is the lover who thinks her dead.
 
The film articulates the human cost of the siege by focusing on one household – a female soldier (Olga Sutulova), an ageing actress, a devoted mother and two young children – along with the woman they shelter, the displaced Sorvino.
 
The big budget allows director Aleksandr Buravsky to paint on a broad canvas, creating a ravishing, appalling, snow-covered Leningrad – its picture perfect winter grandeur an incongruous setting for mass slaughter. The film is also a showcase for the crop-haired Sutulova. She's tremendous as a firm patriot whose humanism gets the better of her.

Rick Burin on 27th January 2010
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