Fyodor Bondarchuk takes a page from Hollywood to tell the story of a group of soldiers from boot camp to combat during the last days of Russia`s Afghan war. Like the Vietnam films of the late-1970s and `80s, the squad at the center of the story comprises a disparate group: a hardened commanding officer, a naive recruit, a new father, a sensitive artist. Bondarchuk`s epic scale drama ends where it should, with a defining yet inevitably tragic final battle. [9th Company] was a box office success in Russia in 2005, where its patriotic, righteous tone touched a chord with audiences that are currently living under the shadow of another war/occupation by the state, this time in Chechnya. Though accused of being nothing more than propaganda, Bondarchuk claims the film is neither anti-war nor militaristic; that it`s just a film about the people whose actions would be used for those purposes.