''The Beast'' (also known as ''The Beast of War'') is a 1988 American

war film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about navy, naval, air force, air, or army, land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle s ...

directed by Kevin Reynolds and written by

William Mastrosimone William Mastrosimone (born August 19, 1947) is an American playwright and screenwriter from Trenton, New Jersey. He attended high school at The Pennington School and received a graduate degree in playwriting from Mason Gross School of the Arts, ...

, based on his play '' Nənawā́te''. The film starred Jason Patric, George Dzundza,

Steven Bauer Steven Bauer (born Esteban Ernesto Echevarría Samson; December 2, 1956) is a Cuban American actor. Bauer began his career on PBS, portraying Joe Peña, the son of Cuban immigrants on '' ¿Qué Pasa, USA?'' (1977–1979). He played Manolo "Ma ...

, Stephen Baldwin, Don Harvey and Erick Avari. The film follows the crew of a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

T-55 tank who became lost during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The film has enjoyed a cult-favorite status in spite of its low box office statistics.

Plot

In 1981

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

, a Soviet tank unit viciously attacks a Pashtun village harboring a group of

mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' (), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' (), an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in ''jihad'' (), interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the commun ...

fighters. Following the assault, one of the tanks—commanded by ruthless commander Daskal ( George Dzundza)—takes a wrong turn through a mountain pass and enters a blind valley. Taj (

) returns to discover the village destroyed, and his father and brother killed—the latter by having been crushed under Daskal's tank. As the new khan following his brother's death, Taj is spurred to seek revenge and leads a band of

fighters into the valley to pursue Daskal's tank (which they call 'The Beast'), counting on their captured RPG-7 anti-tank weapon to destroy it. Lost, isolated, and with their radio damaged in the village attack, the tank crew set out to find Kandahar Road and return to Soviet lines. While camping for the night, Afghan crewman Samad ( Erick Avari) educates the reluctant tank driver, Konstantin Koverchenko ( Jason Patric), about the

Pashtun people Pashtuns (, , ; ;), also known as Pakhtuns, or Pathans, are an Iranic ethnic group primarily residing in southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. They were historically also referred to as Afghans until 1964 after the ...

's code of honour, ''

Pashtunwali Pashtunwali (), also known as Pakhtunwali and Afghaniyat, is the traditional lifestyle or a code of honour and tribal code of the Pashtuns, Pashtun people, from Afghanistan and Pakistan, by which they live. Many scholars widely have interpreted it ...

''; particularly '' nanawatai'', which requires that an enemy is to be given

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred space, sacred place, such as a shrine, protected by ecclesiastical immunity. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This seconda ...

if he asks. En route, the crew suffer several setbacks and ambushes from Taj's band. Suspecting Samad to be a traitor, Daskal murders him in front of his men; Koverchenko threatens to report Daskal for the illegal killing. At a brief stop, Koverchenko reports that their tank is breaking down; Daskal accuses him of mutiny and orders gunner Kaminski ( Don Harvey) and loader Golikov ( Stephen Baldwin) to tie him to a rock, and leave him with a grenade behind his head as a booby-trap for the mujahideen. Wild dogs eventually attack Koverchenko, but he is saved when the grenade rolls off the rock and explodes, scaring them off. Taj's band reunite with several vengeful women from the village and find Koverchenko, who pleads for ''nanawatai.'' The mujahideen give him food and shelter. Koverchenko befriends Taj after fixing the band's broken RPG-7, and agrees to help him destroy the tank. Meanwhile, the remaining tank crew finally realize they are trapped in the valley, until a Soviet helicopter appears and offers to rescue them. Daskal refuses to abandon his tank, and instead has it refueled. The crew heads back towards the narrow mountain pass where they entered, which the helicopter pilot says is the only way out. The crew drives through the night and find the helicopter crew dead, who flew past them and drank from a waterhole the tank crew poisoned earlier with

cyanide In chemistry, cyanide () is an inorganic chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Ionic cyanides contain the cyanide anion . This a ...

. The mujahideen and Koverchenko catch up with the tank and pursue it through the pass. Koverchenko finally fires the RPG after a tense chase, only to damage the tank's main gun. Just as it seems the tank will escape, the village women (armed with explosives) blow up the cliff-side, dropping boulders onto the tank and disabling it. Koverchenko sets fire to the tank's leaked fuel, forcing the crew to bail; he pleads ''nanawatai'' on their behalf, and Taj reluctantly agrees. Koverchenko confronts Daskal over his brutality, and desires that he live to see the Soviets lose the war. Kaminski and Golikov flee on foot, but Daskal is chased down by the village women and murdered; they bring back his bloodied uniform to Taj as trophies. Horrified, Koverchenko waves down an arriving Soviet helicopter to be rescued. Koverchenko salutes Taj as he is hoisted by a harness, brandishing a jezail musket Taj had just gifted to him. Koverchenko flies off with the helicopter over the Afghan landscape.

Cast

* George Dzundza as

Warrant Officer Warrant officer (WO) is a Military rank, rank or category of ranks in the armed forces of many countries. Depending on the country, service, or historical context, warrant officers are sometimes classified as the most junior of the commissioned ...

'Tank Boy' Daskal * Jason Patric as Konstantin Koverchenko *

as Khan Taj * Erick Avari as Samad * Stephen Baldwin as Anton Golikov * Donald Patrick Harvey as Kaminsky * David Sherrill as Lieutenant Kovalyov * Kabir Bedi as Akbar * Chaim Jeraffi as Moustafa * Shoshi Marciano as Sherina * Yitzhak Ne'eman as Iskandar * Roberto Pollack as Shahzaman * Avi Gilor as Khahzaman * Beni Baruchin as Afzal * Victor Ken as Ali * Avi Keedar as Noor * Claude Aviram as Sadioue * Moshe Vapnik as Hasan * Dale Dye as Helicopter Crew Chief (uncredited)

Production

Filming

The film was shot in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. Several actual T-55 tanks were used in the film; however, the helicopter used in the film was not a real Mi-8, but an Aerospatiale SA.321 Super Frelon. The tank in question in the movie is actually an Israeli modification of a Soviet T-55 captured by the Israelis from their Arab armies, redesignated as the Ti-67 and fitted with a 105mm main gun in place of the original 100mm gun, leading some to mistake it for a

T-62 The T-62 is a Soviet main battle tank that was first introduced in 1961. As a further development of the T-55 series, the T-62 retained many similar design elements of its predecessor including low profile and thick turret armour. In contra ...

. The Ti-67 tank in particular is more distinctly known as the Tiran 5Sh. Many of these conversions were used by the Israelis during the 1973

Yom Kippur War The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was fought from 6 to 25 October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states led by Egypt and S ...

. The film's military advisor, Dale Dye, has written that he negotiated the purchase of the tanks over drinks with

Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...

officers in a

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

hotel. The language spoken by the Afghan characters is

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

. The Pashto dialogue is subtitled but some television screenings have omitted the subtitles.

Music

Soundtrack

The original soundtrack music was released by CBS/Columbia Records shortly after the movie's debut, written and performed entirely by

Mark Isham Mark Ware Isham (born September 7, 1951) is an American musician and composer. A trumpeter and keyboardist, Isham works in a variety of genres, including jazz and electronic music, electronic. He is also a prolific and acclaimed composer of Film ...

. The back of the album suggests two tracks ("Badal" and "Nanawatai"), but there are, in fact, ten. Offered in 12-inch LP vinyl, CrO2 cassette and DDD-format compact discs. Used CD copies command rather high prices since limited numbers were released in spite of composer

's celebrity status. In addition to the soundtrack, the song ''Троллейбус'' ("

Trolleybus A trolleybus (also known as trolley bus, trolley coach, trackless trolley, trackless tramin the 1910s and 1920sJoyce, J.; King, J. S.; and Newman, A. G. (1986). ''British Trolleybus Systems'', pp. 9, 12. London: Ian Allan Publishing. .or troll ...

") by the Russian rock band Kino is heard playing on the radio during a scene. However, ''Троллейбус'' was not released until 1983, two years after the events portrayed in the movie. The song was titled ''Streetcar Headed East'' in English-speaking countries.

References

External links

* * *
Notes on the production from military advisor Dale Dye
broken link {{DEFAULTSORT:The Beast 1988 films 1980s war films American war adventure films American war drama films Columbia Pictures films War epic films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films Pashto-language films Cold War films American films based on plays Films about armoured warfare Soviet–Afghan War films Films about Soviet repression Fiction about tanks Films directed by Kevin Reynolds Films set in Afghanistan Films set in 1981 Films shot in Israel Films scored by Mark Isham English-language war films