Taras Bulba

Taras Bulba is a historical adventure set in sixteenth-century Ukraine, where the Cossacks live under Polish rule. Taras Bulba, a Cossack leader, raises his two sons, Ostap and Andrei, to become warriors of the steppe. Andrei takes a different path when he falls in love with a Polish noblewoman, Natalia, and the conflict between his family, his people and his feelings forces choices that set him against his father.

The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson, the sixth of twenty-one features he directed in chronological order, following Cape Fear and preceding What a Way to Go!. Karl Tunberg and Waldo Salt wrote the screenplay, and Harold Hecht produced. Yul Brynner plays Taras Bulba and Tony Curtis plays Andrei, with Christine Kaufmann as Natalia, Sam Wanamaker as Filipenko, Brad Dexter as Shilo and Guy Rolfe as Prince Grigory. It was a co-production between the United States and Yugoslavia, with a budget of seven million dollars and a worldwide box office of four million.

Audience response has been moderate and steady. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.3 out of 10 from around 4,900 votes, while on TMDB it also stands at 6.3 out of 10, from a much smaller base of 84 votes. A film critics' rating of 5 out of 10 from 53 reviews places it slightly below the audience scores.