This is a mess. The local synopsis of the film is 10 times more understandable and clearer than this film! After looking at 20 minutes of this masterpiece, I did not understand where and when its action takes place. Some Siberian people, for a while (or after the Civil War). It turns out that this is Khakassia and Khakass, and the year in the courtyard is 1922, and the Soviet government, only bandits lute. And so on.
Sverdlovsk film studio in Soviet times was not only (naturally) peripheral, but, for the same reason, low-budget. She rarely managed to invite a standing director, “star” actors to the film and release a picture on TV and cinemas not from the category of outsiders. Here is the “Last Year of the Berkut” confirmation of this – a completely inept attempt to create a popular Soviet “Eastern” in those years. I state the fact, and do not express my opinion, because this film work as then, by and large, no one was needed and no one remembered, and now exists only for the “historical” familiarization of the public – they say, and this was filmed.
So I don't recommend watching. But for comparison (if you still decide to watch) immediately switch to the next, 1978, beautiful, classic Eastern "The End of the Emperor of the Taiga" (about the youth of Gaidar), by the way, telling about the same Khakass affairs and bandits (see in it and some actors-khakas from "Berkut", but much brighter!) It's just him. Gorky, just this director Vladimir Sarukhanov and just in the role of Golik-Gaidar-Rostotsky!
4 out of 10