这是一部很特殊的战争题材电影，它真实地描写了德占区人民的悲惨遭遇和场面，以及人们面对突如其来的灾难的恐惧，反映了战争的真实面目。它既不同于《斯大林格勒保卫战》、《攻占柏林》这些正面战场的血肉横飞、排山倒海、摧枯拉朽，也不同与《这里的黎明静悄悄》、《星》所描写的局部战斗中体现的平凡悲壮，更不是战地浪漫曲，而是降临在平民百姓头上血淋淋的残酷。影片的事件和恐怖场面远超过任何一部描写德军集中营的电影，令人毛骨悚然，提醒胆小和心软者慎看。

该影片改编自鲍里斯·瓦西里耶夫的同名小说。1941年6月21日，年轻的中尉科利亚·普卢日尼科夫接到调往布列斯特永久服役的命令。拥挤的车站洋溢着欢欣的希望，这并未让年轻人感到不安。科利亚匆匆赶往他所在部队的驻地——布列斯特要塞。凌晨4点，炮声响起——战争爆发了。他虽未编入布列斯特要塞的军事人员序列，但仍参加了他人生中的第一场战斗，这场战斗持续了十个月。

　　Like Fritz Lang, David Fincher or Bong Joon Ho before him, talented debut filmmaker Lado Kvataniya uses the concept of police detective vs serial killer for an excitingly stylised, macabre and haunting narrative, that ultimately revolves around the identity of an era: in this case, the late 1980s Soviet Union. With Glasnost and the end of communist rule, the West also learned of the (unsurprising) fact that there were serial killers in Russia too – the most notorious case probably that of Andrei Chikatilo, nicknamed the Rostov Ripper, or the Russian Hannibal Lecter.　　Based on these and many other sources, Kvataniya and screenwriter Olga Gorodetskaya constructed an immersive psychological puzzle, jumping back and forth in time, to reveal ever new-possible motives for the actions of all the protagonists. It all starts in 1990, when Detective Issa Davydov is celebrating his promotion and receives a call, reporting a crime that looks precisely like the ones of the serial killer that he famously captured some years before ...