Tankers (film)

Indestructible (Несокрушимый) is a 2018 Russian war film directed by Konstantin Maksimov. It was developed under the working title Tankers (Танкисты).

The film is based on the real story of the feat of the crew of a Soviet KV-1 tank under the command of Semyon Konovalov, which took part in an unequal battle on 13 July 1942 and destroyed 16 tanks, two armored vehicles and eight other vehicles from enemy forces in the area of the village of Nizhnemityakin, Tarasovsky District, Rostov Oblast.

On 9 September 2018, a special private screening of the film for military personnel of the Tamanskaya and Kantemirov Divisions took place; the event took place on Tanker's Day.

The film was released in Russia on 25 October 2018 by 20th Century Fox CIS.

Plot
The film opens with tank commander Semyon Konovalov's KV-1 hunting and destroying a German PzKpfw IV. Later, Konovalov's tank is ambushed and destroyed, along with his platoon. He is injured but survives. It is the second crew he has lost. The Deputy Political Officer of the Battalion (Major Vladimir Krotov) feels Konovalov should be court martialed, but the commanding officer refuses. An engineer from the Kirov tank factory arrives at the battalion with fresh tanks. She is Pavla Chumak, but later we discover she is actually Konovalov's wife. Krotov is unaware of this and tries to woo her. Captain Konovalov reports back to duty and is given a new crew and a KV-1. Still unaware of the connection, Krotov becomes jealous when he sees Konovalov and Chumak together, leading him to send Konovalov's tank on a patrol with two T-34 tanks, knowing full well that the KV-1 is not fit for action. Sure enough, the tank cannot keep up with the others and is ordered back. Instead, Konovalov decides to take up a defensive position and engage three German tanks, which he destroys. However, he is disciplined for disobeying orders and told to go into the upcoming assault as tank-borne infantry. Chumak desperately tries to get Konovalov's KV-1 ready for the battle, but fails. She then is told that another KV-1 is hidden in the woods near the battle site. She finds it and gets it engine working. Konovalov and his surviving crew members join her and go into battle. They first destroy a German half-track, which is then joined by an unknown number of tanks, most of which Konovalov's tank destroys. They are finally stopped by another PzKpfw IV, but Konovalov and two surviving crew members kill the German tank crew and drive it back to their lines.

Cast

 * Andrey Vladimirovich Chernyshov as Captain Semyon Konovalov, tank commander
 * Vladimir Epifantsev as Sergeant Siitov, gunner
 * Oleg Fomin as Junior lieutenant Rykov, Senior Military Technician
 * Olga Pogodina as Pavla Chumak, a production engineer, Semyon Konovalov's wife
 * Sergey Gorobchenko as Major Vladimir Krotov, Deputy Political Officer of the Battalion
 * Nikolai Dobrynin as Basich, a legless surgeon
 * Vasily Sedykh as Junior sergeant Bogdan Shinkevich, driver
 * Vladimir Kochetkov as Gubkin, radio operator-machine gunner
 * Vasily Stepanov as Cantor, translator
 * Dmitry Zolotukhin as Sable
 * Oleg Chudnitsov as Armen
 * Markus Kunze
 * Nikita Salopin
 * Anton Eskin
 * Evgeniy Zelenskiy as Drozdov, tank commander
 * Lera Gorin
 * Aleksandr Tuarminskiy
 * Olga Kavalay-Aksonov
 * Maria Arnaut as Galya
 * Yaroslav Khimchenko
 * Dmitriy Sokolov as Krotov, a radio operator
 * Sergey Rublev
 * Ivan Kozhevnikov
 * Roman Senkov as Sergeant Cheryshev, tankman
 * Yuriy Balitskiy as Ratnikov, tankman

Production
Filming (under the working title Tankers) began on 15 September 2016 in Mozhaysky District, Moscow Oblast, and took place with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Russian Military Historical Society.

The film actively used computer special effects. More than 150 shots with computer graphics were created by the Russian studio Carboncore-vfx.

Box office
In Russia, Tankers was a box office success.

Criticism
The film contains inconsistencies related to the true story of Konovalov's feat and other historical innacurqcies. Some military equipment shown in the film had not yet been developed at the time the film is set: props - layout tiered vehicles stylized as German tanks PzKpfw IVH, which appeared a year later than the action of the film - in 1943, and Soviet tanks T-34-85, which appeared only in 1944. The film received corresponding ratings from critics.