One of the best war movies. How can we, who have never been there understand war? The madness, the horror. Makes no difference , is it 1943 or 1941 or Afghanistan. I cannot understand war.But I can understand being human. Our frailty,red blood,our dreams, skin and bones. This is what the movie is about. We are not made of symbols such as Motherland, Nazis, Stalin,Communists,Soviets,heroes etc, propaganda is made of symbols.We are made of flesh and blood. War is so crazy we hide from it behind imaginary heroes, historical facts , we want some rational to hide from the madness. This film does not comfort by providing meaning,symbols and chronology, maybe that is why so many bad reviews.

Hmm, to be honest, I shouldn't even be writing this. This film shouldn't exist at all. The first Burnt by the Sun was perfect - and ended perfectly. When I heard that there was to be a sequel, my heart sank, and having finally seen the film, my heart is still down there... This film is bad. From the lack of plot, to the ropey acting, to the appalling FX (oh my word, God save us from yet another one of Mikhalkov's badly rendered German planes!), to the bad choice of shots (few still camera shots, showing Nikita's lost his nerve and belief in his ability to frame a shot well and meaningfully), to the absurd events that occur (e.g. defecating out of planes)... this film has nothing to commend itself. Save yourself... keep the pure memories of the first film and don't watch this.

Before obtaining a copy of this film, and being very fond of Part 1, I read some of the reviews here. When reactions were so violent and outraged, most probably they were subjective and the product of defective education. Some even bordered on malignant stupidity. But this could be expected from the contemporary one-book, action-movie generations.Although not the best of the Mikhalkov's movies, it is not bad at all. It could be vastly improved by re-cutting and shortening by one hour or so, but it nevertheless gives an accurate and touching picture of the horrors of the WW II in Soviet Union, of the enormous loss of young lives because of the monstrous Stalinist regime. Red Army was practically headless in 1941 because the majority of its leaders was either killed or in Gulags. It took some time and enormous loss of lives, equipment and territory, to push forward new and capable Red Army leaders and to train the ill prepared troops to fight Germans on equal footing. Mikhalkov's film accurately portrays the chaotic days of '41.If you want to be "awake" go watch Steven Seagal or some such American crap, Mikhalkov is not for you. You are incapable of understanding the fight for survival on your own soil. So, shut up. If you don't like it, why watch it?

The main poster says, "Great movie about great war." The question that rises on my mind is, "HAHAHAHAH are you serious!? Great movie?! Please Nikita stop it you are too funny!" When I saw the title I knew that there is going to be something wrong. All recent successful works, actually never mind more of like just one movie which I liked by Nikita Mihalkov, which was 12, was a remake and not original version. Despite all those views I thought that this is going to change my mind, I repeat I thought! Probably the slogans of the movie suppose to be, "Do you suffer from Insomnia? Do you want to figure out a way to commit a suicide? Well look no more since Burnt by the Sun can change it all!" The movie strictly concentrated on hatred towards Nazi Germany and Stalin's reign. That I found out from movie description on IMDb, very sad. What sadness me most is the fact that in cinema you are able to see that the movie is high quality and they spend a lot of money on it, but let's not forget this is not a 3D movie. Why spend all that money on depicting every single pimple on the person's face when you can write a good script, not showing us all details of the person's face and we will be happy, I promise. The worse part is that it is just part 1, there is part 2 coming out.In deed there were couple of interesting and funny moments, but that doesn't change the fact that movie "SUCKED!" Dear Nikita Mihalkov please write better scripts.Out of ten the max I can give it is 2, yep it was pretty much that bad...(via wioym.net)