The feat of Lieutenant Ivanovsky November 1941. The enemy came close to the walls of Moscow. Coming out of the encirclement with a handful of fighters, Lieutenant Ivanovsky (Alexander Mikhailov) meets in the German rear with the sabotage group of Captain Volokh (Vadim Spiridonov). Uniting, a small detachment moves towards the front line. At night, Voloch’s scouts accidentally discover a German ammunition base hidden in the forest. In the ensuing firefight with the guard base Volokh was killed. When the soldiers of the detachment finally go out to their own, Ivanovsky shows the location of the base on the map to the Soviet general. To deprive the Germans of ammunition or fuel means to stop their advance on this front, and the general decides to risk it. A sabotage group of 10 people under the command of Ivanovsky, whose task is to find and destroy the base, is quickly being prepared. The main difficulty is to have time to reach the designated place before the light.
The film is based on the novel by Vasil Bykov. As far as I remember the story, read as a child, it correlates quite closely with the script of the film, written by director Viktor Sokolov with the participation of the author of the original source. That is, the story is filmed almost one-to-one. In my opinion, in this case, this is the right approach, since Vasil Bykov spelled out everything clearly and optimally. It remained "for small" - convincingly put and play all this. I think that the result was not just good, but much more, because in my humble opinion, “To Live Until Dawn” is one of the most truthful and convincing films about the Great Patriotic War, shot in our country. No raspberries, no embellishment, no packing of Germans - only the harsh truth of war, characteristic of all your work. Bykova. Ours are killing the Germans, but the Germans are killing ours too - it is war, there can be no other way. Not everything in war is always successful, not everything is always smooth (as it is depicted in jingle-patriotic tapes), there are failures, and just human mistakes. But in any case, the feat of Lieutenant Ivanovsky – albeit an ordinary event for the war as a whole, but no less heroic. Look, boys - this is how, just like that, fought for our land grandfathers and great-grandfathers.
8.5 out of 10