Karry
Best movie of this year hands down!
Solemplex
To me, this movie is perfection.
ChanBot
i must have seen a different film!!
Taha Avalos
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
adipocea
What Mikhalkov and his actors did here is unbelievable. I mean, let aside the immense value of this film, I keep wondering how did they do that? How the hack came such an idea to them, to make such a...how should I say, different, crazy, enormous movie ? How did they make those kids play such terrific performances?! Not one of them, but three...You will say that they weren't really uneducated kids from the steppes but educated kids with school that were just acting. Yeah, but how the hell can a kid from the city slip under the skin of a character that lives his entire life in the steppe?! And the performance of Vladimir Gostyukin is nothing less than BRILLIANT. Stands on the same level with the great performances of the great American and British actors, I mean Hanks, Hackman, Hopkins, etc. Oh, it was so easy to screw it up, this movie. A good straight old American movie with this theme would have been like this : the guys are living in the steppe, poetry, here comes the Russian, communication, friendship, then the balance is disturbed, violence come, outside forces that try to ruin the life of the characters, the characters fight, win, the Russian leaves, they say goodbye, they cry, last shot, the Russian appears at the horizon to see them again. Nothing like that in this movie. It is SOOO smart!!!!! Bravo for the Golden Lion, perfectly deserved!
ajrichmang
Nikita Mihalkov is a god when it comes to film. The guy below me is probably a not very smart, Hollywood films are 20% good and the rest is garbage just like your comment. I have seen but a few good American films the rest is the same old crap. I would like to say that American films have no life its always the same. This film has an amazing plot with its twist and turns make it a master piece. I am just trying to get my point across but the policy won't let me have anything smalled than 10 lines. I would love to me Nikita Mihalkov and just let him know that he is such a great director. So please when you see this really try to learn to speak and understand the Russian language so you can actually grasp what the movies is all about and really suck in the meaning of it.
albertine simonet
This is a film of so many pleasures - the delineation of a culture not usually represented in the mainstream; an empathetic, comic-sad, character-driven narrative; an awe-inspiring, Lean-like evocation of the vast lonely Mongolian landscape and its dwarfing of its inhabitants; its moments of genuine hilarity and sadness - that you are fully prepared to forgive its glaring flaws - its 'Westernising' an Oriental subject matter (lush composition, mobile camerawork and editing, excessive close-ups, epic music), unoriginal city/country dichotomy (although this is more complex than at first appears) and its maddening fudge into apocalyptic fantasy.
Fafouin
I had to embrace my aunt after seeing this movie for having brought me to see it. The images are beautiful and the relationships are, at times, complex but always touching. Never have I experienced a filmmaker able to capture the beautiful humanity of each of his characters and their gestures. This film is a treasure and quite possibly my favorite film of all time.