Kris Tavis

This is a movie that can very easily haunt you long after seeing it, which is fitting, considering that the title is a reprise from the Holy Bible in reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Set in Belarus during 1943, the film follows Florya, a young teen who starts out enthusiastic to join the fight against the invading Germans. He finds a rifle and enlists with the local partisan military unit, much to the dismay of his mother. However, he is almost immediately left behind and much of film's remainder consists of him surviving while people all around him are continuously slaughtered by the Germans and their Ukrainian turncoats. Through it all we see his childhood innocence and optimism violently ripped out of him, leaving behind a gaping void of nihilism and a life fueled solely by hatred for one's enemies and devoted solely to their demise. That being said, this is a movie that set out to graphically show examples of the brutal atrocities committed by Germans against the Russian people during that war. Parts of it seemed to have intentionally been made disorienting, creating the impression of being in some sort nightmarish fugue state, which can be pretty surreal at times. It should also come as no surprise that I found parts of this film quite disturbing and difficult to watch. For example, you witness the mass execution of an entire village, then later informed that it happened to 628 Belarusian villages during the war. Needless to say, after watching this, you will have a much better understanding of Russia's desire for revenge during the latter part of the war.