Director Karen Shakhnazarov
Starring Aleksey Vertkov, Vitaliy Kishchenko, Valeriy Grishko
Rated M
Score 4.5/6

After barely surviving a battle with a mysterious, ghostly-white Tiger tank, Red Army Sergeant Ivan Naydenov becomes obsessed with its destruction.

The White Tiger was based on the novel Tankist, ili “Belyy tigr” (The Tank Crewman, Tanker or The White Tiger) by Russian novelist Ilya Boyashov. For those of you who might be interested White Tiger was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013, but it did not make the final shortlist.

Considering that I am not very familiar with Russian cinema, choosing to watch The White Tiger certainly was a spur of the moment decision, though I have watched movies from Russia I think it was at least a year since I have watched a Russian movie (and no The Beast doesn’t count). So, I really was not that familiar with anybody involved with the production of this one.
While watching this I found myself connections between White Tiger and Moby Dick. Which I get is pretty easy to do, but there are also elements to the plot that suggest that that give the movie a superhero quality, you just have to look to the scene where Naydenov talks about the god of tanks and I actually liked the idea.
I enjoyed Aleksey Vertkov’s performance as Naydenov and I’d like that given the opportunity I would watch another movie directed by Karen Shakhnazarov.