The Pilot: A Battle for Survival – review

Russia, 1941: pilot Nikolai Komlev is shot down and must make his way back to safety through the Russian wilderness which is, if anything, more hostile than the German troops invading.

So begins The Pilot: A Battle for Survival, but the film packs so many unexpected developments into its relatively modest runtime – less than two hours – that to give away any more of the plot would be to somewhat ruin the pleasures afforded by this modest, earnest yet never less than entertaining Russian film.

Director Renat Davletyarov makes excellent use of terrain, which is the main theme of this picture – the title The Pilot is somewhat misleading, for a film with so little aerial action – but is equally comfortable in cities coping with the realities of war, or cramped hospital wards. The aerial sequences, as brief as they are, are almost spectacular, showing the service that CGI, used imaginatively, has done to lower-budget filmmaking – how else to realistically depict the swooping, three-dimensional action of a dogfight?

In any case, A Battle for Survival is the more honest half of the film’s title, Komlev’s struggle against the elements giving credible drama, while the final act questions what the meaning of “survival” is anyway, and going to interesting places with it, despite the basically unquestioned assumption present throughout the film of the basic goodness and nobility of patriotism.