Boys have their own laws. “I have a heart, and a heart has a song, and a song has a secret, if you want, guess.”
This is an amazing movie from the first to the last minute. Strong, tough and extremely honest. Just like a film about a military generation of boys left without fathers and older brothers, but at the same time very much in need of a strong male hand. To the trouble, such a “hand” was Arkady Rezchikov, nicknamed “Arcan” (Sergei Sobolev) – far from a young trickster with the habits of the bandit. Having assembled a “detachment” of children of different ages, he led it with the help of the “right hand” – a henchman nicknamed “Khorek” (Vladimir Davydov). So this surrogate collective would have existed if the son of the regiment Kostya Rudakov (Gennady Vorobyov), demobilized from the army, had not come to the town. Against the background of a fighting peer, idle spent time, the boys suddenly realized that their “organization” is not what they expected.
And then the main character Elik (Rifat Musin) felt a heartfelt attraction to the girl Neli (Nato Shengelaya). He tried to explain himself, but the words written by his own hand did not hurt the girl’s feelings. On the contrary, in the letter of a short "cavalier" Nela saw something offensive to herself. And Elik closed himself, went into himself, retired from the affairs of the “detachment”, finding an outlet in communication with front-line soldier Kostya Rudakov. That didn’t go unnoticed by Arcan. Teenage cruelty is a terrible phenomenon. It is good if someone finds himself and realizes that blind humiliating submission to a narrow-minded villain is a dead end. He transforms you from a person with his own will into a puppet controlled by others. Elik didn't want to be such a doll.
Realizing his loss in advance, he went into an open “rebellion” because the girl he dreamed of as an almost celestial creature suddenly descended from heaven to earth and found herself in the back seat of the hated “Arcana” motorcycle. It was at this moment that Elik, internally – only for himself – uttered the word “NO!”, sweeping away all the dirt. The film turned out to be extremely emotional thanks to the sublime mesmerizing music of Yevgeny Krylatov, as well as songs of the war years, which organically woven into the canvas of the narrative, bringing the emotions of the heroes to a new level. A beautiful script without excessive didactics and edifying telling about the life choice of adolescents. Surprisingly penetrating voiceover Dzhigarkhanyan: You can not put up with evil just because now it does not concern you.
