The movie is about the life of a sniper in the Ukrainian army.

The first 30 minutes depict his civilian life until he is dragged into the military conflict. I give this part barely a 5 rating, but that's mostly because I don't feel connected or even very interested in any of the characters. The cinematography is quite good throughout. The actors do their parts ok but do not stand out.

It feels like the movie is made mostly for an Ukrainian audience. For others, it can be worth watching to get an insight into life in this war from the Ukrainian perspective. Some parts of the movie I give a 6 rating, since they are a bit exciting.

I think it is fair to call it a propaganda movie since it gives a quite one-sided Ukrainian view on things. But that doesn't mean it can't be a good movie, e g Humphrey Bogart did 12 movies during WW2 of which at least Action in the North Atlantic (1943) was a propaganda movie and also very good. It also doesn't necessarily mean the contents isn't true or truthful, just that it is all from one perspective.

Please note that even if it is clear to me which country is wrong in this conflict (the invaders) I don't think an IMDB review is the right place to elaborate on that, reviews are to help people decide if to watch the movie or not.

Starts out bizarrely, a teacher and his wife are living the ultimate hippy lifestyle off the grid, maybe this is more prevalent than I've been exposed to, but for the movie, it just seems weird and pointless.

The news reports on them for a sensation piece presumably, but doesn't immediately follow up after his wife is killed..... odd.

It's a great motive for joining a military, but he simply doesn't fit in, and the training, if you want to call it that, is on par with kids playing, but with real guns.

There is literally 2 training scenes on the range, and we're off to fight the war.... except hero boy doesn't bother to listen to his commander, because he's got a good shot on 2 random fighters. Never mind that the commander knows why they're out there, looking for the enemy snipers, but nope, blown away because hero boy couldn't keep his round in his rifle.

Jump to our hero immediately somehow being the go to guy for sniping.... and now he's of course refilling his own ammunition and everything..... So either the pacing of the movie is terrible, and a fair amount of time has passed without any indication of such, or it's just a terrible script.

I'm suspecting it's the latter, since randomly hero boy who didn't seem to get along with his 5 classmates (though he also didn't seem to not get along with them either, there was next to zero emotions showed either way). When two of them went on a mission, off screen and unbeknownst to the viewers, he starts asking about them multiple times, awkwardly. Only for one of them to be dead of course. But wait.... here comes more lack of any emotion...

It ended quite predictably, not a bad thing, but also not riveting.

For the life of me I cannot figure out why they were constantly loading their first round by hand, when the rifles were all magazine fed, unless it's for that one extra round of capacity, than that's fine, but other than that, it makes no sense to do it. I've served in the Canadian military and fired an assortment of weapons, semi auto, full auto, belt fed, mag fed. Never any sniper rifles, so maybe snipers do have a reason for it, just seems unlikely though, and that it was added by someone unfamiliar with weapons.

Oh and to say it's a political statement or propaganda movie, meh, almost every movie is to some extent, even children's cartoons, this one just happens to be a current issue one. It doesn't even detract from the movie.

It is very nice to see that Ukrainian cinematography is developing. It is all the more important that the picture was released in such difficult times for our country.

Of course, the picture does not reach the level of Hollywood action films or films about war. But it is still a worthy attempt to reach a new level. A good story that develops rapidly. A character who adheres to his principles develops and changes. It's cool and it's addictive.

I give 8 points. Yes, maybe overstated. But I myself know very well what war is. And how difficult it is to step over one's own boundaries in order to effectively fight the enemy.