but a primitive story is too much of one-sided pro-Georgian propaganda.

Good Georgians, bad Russians and nothing in the middle.

Well, AFAIK Georgian government sponsored production so it wasn't for free.

Don't try to learn the history of the conflict after that.

Cold War is back. Seems like Rembo from the 80s but lacks Silvester to save the day.

On the other hand it doesn't look like a typical B-movie it could be considering it's screenplay.

Director's work is good, acting is not too bad. Special effects is nice too excluding cheap gasoline explosions.

Worth watching anyway.

This film is certainly an enigma. Do you rate it for its acting and action sequences, or for the historical accuracy of the conflict it pertains to? Covering the former, the acting here is fairly top-notch by all involved, and the action scenes are where this film excels. Since individuals involved with the Georgian government assisted in bankrolling the film, they also got full backing from the Georgian Army, so if you are an eclectic "tread-head" you will be pleased to see the actual equipment used by both sides in the conflict, including Mi-24D Hind's, Su-25 Frogfoot's, T-72's w/ERA of various makes, BTR-60's & 70's, BMP-2's, you name it. This does much to lend an air of credibility when viewing. For the normal viewer this may not matter much, but the action scenes are well (sometimes too well) choreographed.

Now as for the film's handling of its source material (the 2008 Georgia- Russia war over South Ossetia and Abkhazia), make no mistake about it, this is a textbook example of propaganda film. The Russian and South Ossetian militia are portrayed as savage and merciless killers executing and gunning down everyone in sight, while the brave Georgian soldiers are Hollywood Navy SEALS incarnate. Some of the more obvious propaganda shots do tend to take away from the film a bit (people getting gunned down in classic slow motion), but all in all, if you realize what you are watching....

So, take it for what it is, a very loose patriotic Georgian "interpretation" of the 2008 war. If you are decidedly pro-Russian, the film will likely make you fume. If you are decidedly pro-Georgian, it will likely elicit a few cheers. If like me you are simply aware of the historical facts of the conflict but have no dog in the fight, you can just sit back and enjoy a fairly good film covering subject matter mainstream Hollywood would never bother with. Just do yourself a favor, read up on the conflict before or after viewing so you at least have a balanced view....

Well, all kinds of things went wrong with this movie.

For starters, the opening sequence is awesome. One thing this movie really had was best camera crew ever. Everything feels very intense all the times, very close to the real war footage. Also, all the props, vehicles, uniforms, even explosions look very real. This is the good part.

The mediocre part is main story. It's a mix of Hotel Rwanda and Tears of the Sun, but feels like a bootleg version, a cheap knockoff of those.

And then there's the bad part. Just after awesome intro, you get "treated" with shots of Tbilisi, with landmarks, people smiling, and god forbid, trancey music in the background. It looked like a commercial for some travel agency, with only "Visit Georgia" message missing from the scene and was most tasteless thing I've ever seen in a film. I live in similar post-soviet country and I do understand the mentality in desperate desire to explain your culture to the world to get less looked as some remote hellhole, but this is outright tasteless and maybe Georgia hasn't come to this yet.

The script had generally no direction. Awesome war scene here, some corpses there, cameramen and photography director knew what to do... But director didn't. First, that simple shot with church and bloody river from 'Tears of the Sun' gives 10 times stronger emotion than whole pile of bodies shown in '5 days of August'. Even though latter tries sooo hard to portray Russians as savages.

Second, despite awesome camera and props, fighting had no point in this movie. You see soldiers shooting stuff and each other, but it's unclear why or what's their plan. I don't think any people who had any idea about how soldiers and military works were on the set. Mi-24 choppers shooting random buildings with rockets? And here I thought that every pilot is given orders and targets to waste expensive munitions on... Also, MI-24 sports a deadly cannon, but it's used only once, missing everything, and soldiers act as chopper had blind men for pilot and gunner, not taking cover. Tanks constantly missing targets and not using machine guns? Taking down a chopper with a single LAW rocket? SU-bombers taking down a restaurant residing in basically nowhere? This all felt very bizarre and pointless.

I could go on, but there's no need. Let's just say that this movie is very average, has some good moments, lots of unmemorable moments, and some outright stupid ones. So pick it up from bargain bin, but don't expect too much.

6 stars I give are for 2 reasons: Awesome camera work (it felt like live action at places) and the fact that despite being incredibly dumb, this movie IS entertaining... and that's good, even if it's for all wrong reasons.

...as for amount of propaganda, this movie is 100% okay, considering what comes from Moscow. Sure it's all bloated and overrated but this is how we rock in those former USSR satellite countries. Even 50 of such movies can't counter a single evening news show from random Russian TV-channel. For westerners, you just have to accept that rules are different, but watching all those Normandy landings in every Hollywood movie and video game, maybe not as much as you might think.