The Beast of War
Short description
The Beast of War is set during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where a T-55 tank crew is cut off from its column after a punitive raid on a village. With the radio destroyed, the tank loses contact with the armoured column and wanders the desert, hunted by Mujahideen fighters seeking revenge for the dead of their village. The crew is led by Daskal, a brutal commander, and includes the soldier Konstantin Koverchenko, who is left to die by his own officer and then taken in by the rebels. The film follows his attempts to understand the war, to survive it, and to remain a decent man while the tank and its pursuers close on one another.
Kevin Reynolds directed from a screenplay by William Mastrosimone, with John Fiedler producing. It followed Reynolds's Fandango in the chronological order of the films listed for him. George Dzundza plays Daskal, Jason Patric plays Koverchenko, and Steven Bauer plays Khan Taj, alongside Stephen Baldwin, Don Harvey and Kabir Bedi among a credited cast of 21. Made for a modest budget, the film is set in a war of occupation.
Audience response has been favourable: on IMDb it holds 7.3/10 from around 12,000 votes, and on TMDB 7/10 from 224 votes, which suggests a small but appreciative viewership rather than wide commercial success.
What's left behind the scenes
- The words "Badal" and "Nanawatai," spoken by the mujahideen in the film, mean "revenge" and "mercy," respectively.
- In the film, the actors use American military slang and commands, which sounds inappropriate coming from Soviet soldiers. When the film was dubbed for release in Hungary, this oversight was corrected and replaced with jargon and commands accepted in the armies of the Warsaw Pact countries. Nevertheless, the tank commander repeatedly uses the outdated word “grapeshot,” referring to a fragmentation shell.
- There are some inconsistencies in Daskal's backstory. He mentions fighting the Nazis in Stalingrad (1942-1943) at the age of 8, but if that were the case, he would have been 46 or 47 years old by the time the film's action takes place. Furthermore, he talks about a tank that was disabled by an RPG shot in Mongolia, but the Soviet army never engaged in combat operations in Mongolia.
- The crew of the T-62 tank consists of 4 people, not 5 as shown in the film. 5 people simply would not fit inside this model of tank.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
