This is a wonderful movie from the Soviet Union that follows one simple soldier for the course of less than a week. Pvt. Alyosha Skvortsov is on the battlefield running from an oncoming German tank. He is scared half to death but manages, in his panic, to jump into a fox hole where he finds a bazooka-like gun and destroys the tank. Moments later, another German tank appears and he dispatches that one as well! The German tanks not hit are in a panic and make a hasty retreat. Later, the private is brought to the general where he is congratulated and told he would get a medal for his bravery. Skvortsov instead asks if perhaps he could have a pass to see his mother--and the general agrees.<br /><br />However, the pass is only for a few days and despite Skvortsov insisting he could make it home in a day or so, there is a war on and it takes so much longer to get home than he anticipated. In fact, he is taken from touching vignette to touching vignette--all told marvelously and with such heart. One soldier who sees him heading away from the front begs him to stop on the way home and bring some soap to his wife and tell her he is okay. How this all works itself out was amazingly honest and touching. Even more touching was the one-legged veteran he meets who is also on the way home. The guy doesn't believe that his wife would like him back--particularly with the injury. But, Skvortsov is such a decent guy that he takes time out of his leave to force the guy to go home and not run away. This leads to one of the most touching reunions you'll ever see. Additionally, the young soldier also happens to meet a pretty young lady on a train and falls in love with her (reminiscent of the film THE CLOCK). Ultimately, he does arrive home for an all-too-brief moment where you'll likely shed a tear or two.<br /><br />The film is marvelous and honest. Instead of the jingoistic propaganda film this would have been had it been made during the war, a few years had passed and the film has a more realistic focus. The extreme bravery, fear, decency and bad in people are all explored and as a result the film seems so real. Also, the whole look of the war was achieved so well. The German tanks are actually German tanks (thanks to countless tanks abandoned by fleeing Germans during the war)--something you just don't see in American films because they aren't available. The battlefields look stark and vivid. And, in a good nod to realism, one soldier eats canned meat that clearly has an American label on it (something Stalin NEVER would have allowed in a film--since he ALONE is why the Russians prevailed, or so it would have been portrayed if the film had been made before his death in 1953).<br /><br />I can compare this film favorably to many of the great war films that explore real human beings--such as THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES or the recent film ENEMY AT THE GATES. A masterpiece of honesty and humanity.