The Beast of War (1988)

Director:

Kevin Reynolds

Writer:

William Mastrosimone (play) (screenplay)

Release Date:

29 September 1988 (West Germany)

Genre:

Drama | History | War

Tagline:

War brings out the beast in every man.

Plot:

During the war in Afghanistan a Soviet tank crew commanded by a tyrannical officer find themselves lost...

Plot Keywords:

Tank | Battle | Village | Commander | 1980s

Awards:

1 win

Cast

George Dzundza	...	Daskal
Jason Patric	...	Koverchenko
Steven Bauer	...	Taj
Stephen Baldwin	...	Golikov
Don Harvey	...	Kaminski
Kabir Bedi	...	Akbar
Erick Avari	...	Samad
Chaim Girafi	...	Moustafa (as Haim Gerafi)
Shoshi Marciano	...	Sherina (as Shosh Marciano)
Yitzhak Ne'eman	...	Iskandar (as Itzhak Babi Ne'Eman)
David Sherrill	...	Kovolov
Moshe Vapnik	...	Hasan
Claude Aviram	...	Sadioue
Victor Ken	...	Ali
Avi Keedar	...	Noor

Also Known As:

The Beast (USA) (video box title)

Runtime:

111 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Pashtu

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

West Germany:18 | South Korea:18 | UK:18 | USA:R | Australia:M | Singapore:PG | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

Israel

Company:

A&M Films

Trivia:

When the film was made at Columbia, David Puttnam was head of the studio. By the time the film was released, Puttnam was out and 'Dawn Steel (I)' was head of the studio. As a result, the film was released in a small number of theaters under the title "The Beast".

Goofs:

Continuity: The searchlight on the turret and the canvas around tank main gun change back and forth from damaged (from nighttime Molotov attack) to undamaged several times.

Quotes:

Helicopter pilot: Today's your lucky day. If we hadn't been out here looking for water we wouldn't have found you guys. Go ahead and climb aboard, I'll call in an airstrike on the tank.
Daskal: Nobody wastes my tank...

Movie Connections:

Featured in Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 (2001)

Soundtrack:

STREETCAR HEADED EAST

Moby Dick, with Ahab in the whale...

This neglected and largely unknown anti-war film, ranks as one of the best of the genre. Since other posters have commented extensively on this movie, I'll limit myself to a few comments about those elements others have not addressed.

In it my understanding from material I read at the time the movie was in release (I saw it in Los Angeles when I was living there in the late 80s) that the actors who portrayed Afghanis learned and delivered their lines phonetically. The fact that the "Russians" sound like Americans, and the Afghans are speaking the language without subtitles is a brilliant dramatic device. Virtually no one is going to understand what the Afghanis are actually saying, but it is possible to get the gist from the context and from body language. This has the effect of alienating the viewer from the freedom fighters and making them tend to identify with the Russian tank crew. The movie then operates subversively against this natural tendency throughout the remainder of the story.

The hunting of the tank by the Mujahadeen has an almost mythic quality, except for the fact that the T-62 is real and it has a human crew. And leading that crew is the tank commander whose entire life was shaped by his experiences in "The Great Patriotic War" against the Nazis when, as an 8-year-old, he was used by Russian troops in Stalingrad to help kill German tanks. The commander is as monomaniacal as Ahab, but instead of pursuing the whale, he is it's animating spirit.

There are a lot of layers to this movie -- it will definitely repay repeat viewings.