5 Days of War

In conservative West Texas, Peace won't happen until Armagedon happens. Zimbardo says the same means of Oppression (read Smedley Butler's War is a Racket), have to be used to elevate the human condition. Yes, you know the wedding scene is going to end bad but you don't want it to be that way. The sheer beauty of the ritual comes through. We are past bonking people on the head to get our way, no matter what country! You need to see this movie to help you see the point of view of the innocents. To sidestep the propaganda of the demonized enemy and see the old men and women we want to become, spoiling our kids and grandkids hoping they can have happiness in their life. As I'm typing this I'm watching the new movie Burlesque with Cher, which, to me epitomizes the American Dream. We have a world where everyone could have a clean glass of water chase any dream we choose if we realize that every one has the right .... NOT to be killed.

Here are the List of Headlines of the Reviews that gave to this Movie 1 out of 10. All of them blame the movie that it is not historically correct and they know what happened there in fact. Blaming EU and USA in several Genocides and spreading wrong information about Russians. Here are Headlines: This film had to have been financed by the CIA... This film is NOT based on a true story... Not whatsoever... Propaganda... Just plain awful!... An overall watchable war movie although historically inaccurate... Watch if you want to puke... Worst movie of the year!... Thankfully I didn't waste money on this!..., Bring back Rambo!... Propaganda... A movie that "Joseph Goebbels" would have like... The 8 minute movie... Weapon of War against the Truth... awful movie... shameless anti-Russia pro-Saakashvili propaganda tool... This movie is kinda stupid in every way.... I believe that every movie is some kind of propaganda, especially when it is a historical movie as history is never correct. I wonder if there are same kind of Reviews to the movies such as Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan or Katyn. There where some reviews giving 1 out of 10 and blaming the movie is propaganda even before the first premiere of the movie. Doesn't it sound strange already?

This is a gritty, realistic, shocking movie which reminds us of the sometimes terrible world we live in. Its depiction of the lives brave reporters live on the front line in war torn countries is pretty accurate I would say. They risk everything to get the truth out to the rest of the world who are not even interested most of the time, preferring to report on more trivial stories. As I write this brief review, 63 % of reviewers have given this a score of 6/10 and over, 40 % giving 10/10. This is in my mind what it deserves. The fact that over 20 % have given this film 1/10 is offensive and ridiculous. I would suggest the people who have given this film 1/10 are either Russian, vacuous soap opera watchers or fans of the likes of Justin Bieber, Paris Hilton and anything else remotely trashy and fake. This is gripping and dramatic and well worth a look.

It's well worth the watch and makes you realize the terrible thing war is. It carries a moving message. It will not be on par with something like Private Ryan but it gives you more or less the same vibe because you start to wonder what is going to happen next. You start to sit on the edge of your seat. This movie basically highlights the evils of war and engages without disappointment. There is some truth to it because this event happened but the characters are most definitely fictitious. It paints the general picture of what happened there. Terrible that these things still happen in this day and age. One would hope after thousands of years of conflicts that the human race would have become civilized by now. I can't really understand the other negative reviews. I think the general idea that this event happened gives this movie a ring of truth to it making it more engaging, maybe even enlightening. I think this movie does a great job in highlighting what a terrible thing war is ... and it engages you at the same time.

The ideas behind the story and the movie seem very noble - to bring to attention the horrors of war. For that we have story, eyewitnesses, victims, high press coverage and it all happened in recent history. However, something that was an ideal setting for a humanist drama is corrupted by many flaws. Cinematography is frankly very bad. It's on par with home movies. There is little feel to the pictures you see and they do not deliver the feelings that are behind the script. Unless you lived though that particular horror, this movie will not spark any passionate feelings. It's literally like watching a documentary of wildlife. In short, the picture lacks any feel to it. Direction was ordinary at best. A few emotion filled moments were apparent, yet the cinematography failures just wiped it off the face of the picture. Quite a lot of CG, yet it's not an action movie. It just kills any underlying messages. Though the CG was very good by itself. The story is over-politicized. Though I don't think that there is anything wrong to portray a single side of a conflict, I do have a lot of issues when that side is very political. It has very clear tendencies, that result in some strange plot "twists". Some make sense, some don't. Like in all stories the politics just covers up the human side. It's no wonder that the story has tendencies, since quite a lot of Georgians worked on the movie. Sometimes such composition of crew results in a highly emotional and expressive movie. Yet this time those personal connections are lost along the way, giving way to the political aspect of the story. The Georgians that were close to the conflict will feel emotional towards the movie and will relate in some way. People that were far away will not see through the political veil and fail to relate to hardships and suffering of ordinary people.

I watched this film last night and we most certainly enjoyed it.The film holds your interest from start to end which is what we like in all films. The film does not say it is a documentary, nor does it say it is based on any true events. After reading some of the other reviews it is obvious that this film is sparking up quite a lot of controversy with some taking it very personal. I think the actors did a splendid job and by people giving this a vote of 1 out of 10 (also one of them admitting that they never watched the whole thing)is only going to promote the movie further as it will intrigue people to see what all the fuss is about. Many movies have been made about many wars and we all know that most likely none of them portrayed the exact true events. Go into this film with an open mind and just enjoy a good action packed film along with a good story and good footage.Andy Garcia played the part well and also remember that actors are given their roles to act and are simply actors. Now , after reading the reviews you just have to see this film don't you.

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 not a Hollywood portrayal of this war with the purpose of demeaning Russia and exalting Georgia. It is a meaningful story of the plight of Georgia to be independent and free of any dictatorship of any kind. Renney's directorship is brilliant in that he does not color it to be pro-anyone. The history of Georgia and Russia and all of the events leading up to this war would be more than one screenplay could cover. Georgia's fight is heartwarming for it is always great to see 'the little guy put up a good fight'!! Val Kilmer and Andy Garcia are as good as they get. There is the role of the Georgian officer played by an American actor, Johnathon Schaech, who does a fantastic job of portraying a man who leads his men victoriously. Schaech shocks you a bit when he actually speaks Georgian and from what I understand does it extremely well. A film worth your $$ and time.

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.

My hopes were high for this movie. The War between Georgia and South Ossetia/Russia in August of 2008 would seem to be a great background to a well-plotted, carefully crafted film that captures all the intrigue of the Caucasus. Since the Caucasus have always been a nest of ethnic divisions, political double-dealing and vicious banditry I would think any decent screenwriter and director could piece together a fairly intense thriller, I was so wrong. 5 Days of War is a twisted train wreck of special effects laden action and blatant propaganda with a parade of terrible acting. This film was disappointing on many levels. About 40 minutes into the film I realized I was watching a $20,000,000 piece of pro-Georgian anti-Russian propaganda. If anyone does a little research on this war they will clearly see that both sides committed illegal acts under international law. Georgia is actually blamed for triggering the war by using heavy artillery on a city unprovoked which killed civilians, Russian Peacekeepers and damaged large tracts of the city. Once the war began some Ossetia militias fighting with the Russians committed acts of ethnic cleansing and were not stopped by the Russian Military or Government. Shame on them and shame on Georgia for bombarding a city. I do not have a dog in this fight, I think that the problems of that part of the world should be answered by the countries and governments of that region. It is obvious that the filmmakers feel that we should clearly be supporting Georgia with their charismatic leader Mikheil Saakashvili played by Andy Garcia who is portrayed as a Georgian Thomas Jefferson or JFK. Why the hell did they use Andy Garcia anyway? This movie does nothing to help the outsider with the complexities of the actual situation. I want to know what the target audience was for the filmmakers. I was insulted by this film. Why would they take such a complex and historical subject and simplify it down to this? Westerners are natural allies of the peace-loving, compassionate Georgians therefore the obvious "Bad Guys" are the Russians and South Ossetians who bring murder, terror and misery upon the progressive Georgians. The world isn't so black and white and even us dimwitted moviegoers can appreciate the intricacies of politics in the Caucasus. The protagonist of this wreck is an unlikeable American journalist (Rupert Friend in a career ending role) who jumps head first into danger because of his troubled past. He is surrounded by a cadre of American/British journalists (Val Kilmer, Kenneth Cranham who are both wasted as ridiculous caricatures) who drink hard, take big risks and are always crying about how nobody cares about what is going on in the world. At all times they are protected and working directly on behalf of a group of saintly Georgian soldiers. They do not even pretend to be impartial and objective. The contrived role of Tatia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) is another low point in a film filled with an excruciating level of inaccuracies, clichés and thoughtless dialogue. Special effects are strong, location looks beautiful but the storyline and fact every major character is played by an American or British actor and not native Georgians/Russians is thoughtless and insulting (insulted again). ONLY WASTE YOUR TIME ON THIS FILM IF YOU HAVE TIME TO WASTE AND REALLY WANT TO HAVE YOUR INTELLIGENCE QUESTIONED. A TRAVESTY.