This movie was paid for by the church so that the basic plot holds itself true to the living of saint Alexius of Moscow. Still the director managed to make the best out of it, to pack it together with a lovely tale about an overlooked page of Russian history: the impending collapse of the Golden Horde. And rotting it starts from the head, with the uncouth assassination of khan Tini Beg by his brother Jani Beg.This is a refreshing view for historical cinema. Hitherto the Horde was never given any lines of dialogue. You might have seen Andrey Rublev by Tarkovsky: they raze a city to the ground and ride away. In Eisenstein's Nevsky they're also shown to be an amorphous sinister outside force which can intervene on someone's behalf in Russian politics but is never doing anything on their own. They've been hitherto shown as unspeakable savages, as the Borg, as the zerg but never as dramatic characters, as yet another wave of brutal Russian statesmen, akin to the Bolsheviks or to Ivan the Terrible's thugs. The movie dispels the myth the Tatar Yoke was felled by the Russians in the Grand Standing on the Ugra river. You're shown it instead has removed itself, decades in advance, in a painfully similar manner to so many other political entities on the Russian soil.An interesting moment lost on foreign viewers is usage of language in the film. It is amusing to see some obscure Central Asian language being the prestige dialect, the lingua franca, to all of the Russians. Today it's the other way round.

it is a seed. like Tsar who presents a thin slice of history , in an admirable manner but who do not desire to present only a story but a long chain of questions. a beautiful movie - the acting ( Roza Hayrullina and Maxim Sukhanov are the best arguments), precise science of recreated atmosphere and great talent to give impressive images. a film about power and faith, fall and twilight. like an Oriental fairy tale, it presents the clash between worlds and the power of weakness. with a splendid result. it contains violence and cruelty, clichés and , at first sigh, unrealistic moments. but the key is simple - it is a Russian story, seed and not fruit of a way to discover the past as root of present. a real good film. despite reserves .

Are you sure you are well enough informed about all "historical value"? have you any idea about mongol-tatar yoke over Russia (more than 200 years)? So what exactly attitude you expect, when describing this particular period? Well, maybe Mongolian version is better and more different, it is... well understandable. But it's Russian history and Russian film. There are so much historical sources about how Russian were killed in a most cruel ways, thousands of them, families and towns. There was almost no life at all, how you expect all this feelings in every soul - fear and anger - to be shown? And yes, it the almost beginning of Christianity in Russia, with all passion and exaggеration, but also with all self-sаcrifice, specific for the period. So for me portraits of Mongolians are interesting and even soft... Or you expect always Russians to be bad, no matter who is opposite, Goebbels or Mongolians of the Horde, or etc. Time was full of cruelty, hatred, collision... and it is shown. I don't say the film is brilliant. But it is easy to fill your review with "interesting" phrases like "paranoid, hyper racist anti Asian propaganda", "KGB/orthodox church sponsored rubbish", "Goebbels anti Jews propaganda"... They are attractive and welcome for haters. But understanding is something different.

Russia, once film art superpower the land of Viertov, Eisenstein, Tarkowskij where is your film art gone? Since years hardly anything watchable, only few interesting movies but this trash is embarrassing. Script enough for 10 max 20 minutes short film, poorly filmed, zero historical value, no concept other than paranoid, hyper racist anti Asian propaganda. The portrayal of the Mongols reminds of Goebbels anti Jews propaganda. The paradox is that recently seen a Mongolian film and compared to this KGB/orthodox church sponsored rubbish it was well done, interesting, artistically valuable. This miserable production reminds of those Italian mythological movies from 60s except it lack their charm. Hope Russia will find its way back to genuine cinematic art that it was once such a beacon.