Sniper: The White Raven Review Raw Account Of Ukrainian Resistance In Donbas
His war film is set in Ukraine before the February invasion and tells how Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting in eastern Donbas since 2014. Director Marian Bushan co-wrote the script with school teacher-turned-military Mykola Voronin, apparently inspired by some of his real-life experiences. Their story certainly resonates, but I found a slightly hidden feeling of witnessing the raw truth anchored by every war movie cliché in the books.
Ukrainian musician and actor Aldoshin Aldoshin plays the lead role of Nikolay, a pacifist hippie who teaches high school math and physics. Mykola moves with his pregnant wife Nastya (Marina Koshkina) to the resettled, industrialized eastern Ukraine to live off the grid in precarious conditions. In the film's spectacular opening scene, we see him spend his days chopping wood and sketching wildlife. The couple had no television or telephone, so they missed warnings about the Russian invasion. When Nastya is brutally murdered, Mykola joins the volunteer battalion and vows to take revenge on the Russians who killed his wife. Ukrainian officers, expecting him to stay in the army for a week, nicknamed him "Civ".
When Nikolay goes into warrior mode, the training scenes are predictable: push-ups in the rain, hitting weights, crawling under nets on an obstacle course. Her delicate and beautiful face instantly warmed, her porcelain blue eyes shining with anger. At first the officers laughed at how desperate he was for a gun; Then, of course, there's the victory scene in which he shows what they're made of while blindfolded as he disassembles and reassembles the AK-47 in 20 seconds. Yes yes. After that, Nikolay received the nickname Raven and became a sniper.
As an action film written by a soldier, this material feels less original and genuine. However, it was a noble effort to honor the resilience of Ukraine and the courage of ordinary people like Voronin to fight for independence.
