unsurprisingly given its origins, no "fog of war" exists here, just brave Georgian soldiers and helpless citizens facing Russians whose rogue, tattooed gunmen happily shoot grandmothers without provocation
undeniably often impressive, with its hundreds of extras and carefully staged battle tableaux, but "staged" is the operative word, as these scenes often look too pictorially arranged to have much real-life immediacy
the drama has some exhilarating moments, but they're dampened by concessions to conventionally bloviating music, overly theatrical dialogue and inadvertently comic slo-mo