The Beast of War (1988) on Netflix
A Soviet tank under Daskal shells a Pashtun village in Afghanistan. The tank takes a wrong turn into a blind valley. Taj, the new khan, leads mujahideen fighters after it.
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Trailer
Plot summary
A Soviet tank column rolls through a Pashtun village in Afghanistan in 1981, wrecking buildings and crushing an elder beneath a tread. When the villagers' men return, Taj becomes khan after his brother's death, and his cousin Moustafa arrives with rebels on motorbikes, reporting that one tank has blundered into the valley of the jackals. Sherina brings out an old rocket-propelled grenade launcher to avenge the dead. Inside that tank the crew is cut off, its radio damaged and Daskal's map partly burned. Koverchenko drives, Samad interprets, and Samad describes the Pashtun code of nanawatai, which obliges a man to shelter even an enemy who asks. Taj leads his fighters along the ridges while the tank searches for Kandahar Road.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Beast of War (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's military advisor Dale Dye has written that he got hold of the Soviet tanks by negotiating their purchase over drinks with Israel Defense Forces officers in a Tel Aviv hotel.
- Shot in Israel, the film used real T-55s that the Israelis had captured from Arab armies and rebuilt as the Ti-67, fitted with a 105mm gun in place of the 100mm. The Soviet Mi-8 helicopter is actually a French Aerospatiale Super Frelon.
- A radio in one scene plays "Trolleybus" by the Russian rock band Kino, a song that did not exist in 1981, when the story is set: it came out in 1983, and was titled "Streetcar Headed East" in English-speaking countries.
