December 27, 2025 – This is a very difficult movie to watch. Most war movies are not realistic, but this one is brutally real because much of it comes from video cameras worn by the Ukrainian soldiers fighting entrenched Russian defenders near the small town of Andriivka in 2023. PBS Frontline (WGBH) and The Associated Press co-produced this film.

Journalists Mstyslav Chernov and Alex Babenko accompany a Ukrainian platoon on a mission to liberate Andriivka. The platoon needs to advance 2000 meters (roughly 1.25 miles) through a shattered strip of forest surrounded by land mines. Overhead shots from drones show the fields covered in thousands of shell holes. Destroyed armored vehicles lie along the roads.

The platoon advances slowly through the forest, hiding in trenches and bunkers built by soldiers who fought there before. In some ways this kind of warfare dates back at least 200 years, but in other ways this war is very much 21st century in nature. Soldiers on the ground get radio scouting reports from miles away sent to them by soldiers watching overhead drone images of the battlefield on computer monitors.

The platoon advances, then waits in trenches while drones and artillery take out enemy mortar and artillery positions to make it safer for them to advance again. This is very much a drone war. There are drones used for scouting, and kamikaze drones are used to take out enemy positions. Some drones can drop bombs on the enemy. Both sides of this war use drones to kill soldiers.

Advancing through the forest is very slow. The Russians repeatedly fire from hidden positions, killing and wounding the advancing Ukrainians. There is an extraordinary amount of actual combat footage in this movie thanks to the journalists and the cameras worn by soldiers. One thing I noticed is that the gunshots don't sound anything like what you hear in war movies. The sound is more muffled and muted.

There is also some footage in the movie taken behind the lines, where civilians mourn their sons, brothers and friends killed in this war. One woman bitterly disagrees with a popular saying that “heroes never die.” She says that heroes die, while those who avoid fighting live on. Mstyslav Chernov says in a voice over: The longer that the war goes on “the less the world will care about it.” The journalists seem heroic. Some soldiers wonder why they are going into battle unarmed.

The pro-Russian U.S. government has been urging the Ukrainians to give up and give Russia what it wants, proposing a deal sort of like the Munich Agreement between the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy in 1938. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said of that agreement, “I believe it is peace for our time,” but less than a year later, Germany violated the agreement, and World War II started. In another voice-over in the movie, a reporter says, “If Ukraine falls, then Russian forces will be on Europe's doorstep. It becomes NATO's war.”

We get to know several soldiers in this movie. None of them thinks he will die in this war, but some do. Another voice-over tells what becomes of an older soldier in the platoon in the future: “Sheva is 46. At the beginning of the counteroffensive, he left a comfortable position in the military police to volunteer with the 3rd Assault Brigade. He will be injured in a battle five months from now and will die in a hospital.”

This movie depicts real war from a soldier's perspective. This is no romantic adventure tale. It is simple survival for some and death for others. The battle for Andriivka is a real meat grinder that seems pointless. The town is destroyed. The only survivor in the ruins of the town is a cat the soldiers name Andriivka. The lucky cat is taken away to safety. This movie rates a B.

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