| Director | Aleksey Sidorov, Alexey Sidorov |
|---|---|
| Budget | RUB 600 million |
| Box office | RUB 2 billion |
In November 1941 on the Eastern Front of World War II, Red Army Junior Lieutenant Nikolai Ivushkin is assigned to command a damaged T-34-76 tank whose commander was killed. His orders are to delay the Germans' advance the defense of the Soviet Union with only one tank and supporting infantry. Nikolai and his crew lay an ambush for a platoon of German panzers commanded by Heer Hauptmann (Captain) Klaus Jäger. They destroy six panzers, but in a final duel with Jäger's command vehicle, both tanks are disabled, Nikolai and driver Stepan Vasilyonok are captured and the rest of the crew is killed.
In 1944, Jäger, now a Standartenführer (SS-Colonel), receives permission from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Heer General Heinz Guderian to recruit an experienced tank crew from Soviet POWs in a concentration camp to act as opponents for training the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. Jäger selects Nikolai through the camp's interpreter, a female prisoner named Anya. When Nikolai refuses, Jäger threatens to kill Anya and he agrees. By suggesting it as a means of escape, he convinces three prisoners to become his crew: driver Vasilyonok, loader Serafim Ionov, and gunner Demyan Volchok. Their first task is to clean the dead crew from a newly captured T-34-85. They unexpectedly find live shells and hand grenades in a hidden reserve rack. While burying the previous crew, they hide the munitions in a cairn on the edge of the training ground. When Jäger orders anti-tank mines laid throughout the training ground, Anya provides Nikolai with a stolen map of the minefield and convinces Nikolai to let her escape with them.
Nikolai and his crew retrieve the munitions before the training exercise, and create a smoke screen to mask their movements. Their first armour-piercing shell knocks out a Panther tank, and they blow up the observation tower, killing most of the occupants. The T-34 storms through the car park, crushing staff cars and breaking through the main gate. They pick up Anya at a bus stop outside the camp and head for Czechoslovakia and the Red Army's lines. They escape an encounter with an anti-tank gun with only a dented turret.
As night falls Nikolai suggests abandoning the tank and splitting up. The crew insists on staying together with the tank. Hearing German vehicles before dawn, Nikolai sends Anya away on foot and plans to meet her further east. Jäger tries to spot the T-34 from a Fieseler Storch plane, then prepares an ambush with four Panthers in Klingenthal. When the T-34 reaches the town, it disables the first Panther by skipping solid shot into its underbelly. Surrounded by the other three German tanks, Volchok disables one with a grenade. Vasilyonok crashes the T-34 through a building, flanking another Panther and killing it with a point-blank shot. The resulting explosion stuns the T-34 crew and another Panther takes aim. Volchok fires the gun of the German tank he captured disabling the third Panther but Jäger returns fire and Volchok is badly wounded.
Jäger and Nikolai emerge from the cupolas of their tanks, and Jäger throws down his glove, inviting Nikolai to a duel. They face off outside the town over a narrow stone bridge and both tanks are heavily damaged. The T-34 rams Jäger's tank toward the bridge's edge. The commanders disembark to duel with pistols, and Nikolai spares Jäger. They shake hands, but when Nikolai tries to pull Jäger to safety, Jager refuses capture, instead committing suicide by allowing himself to fall from the bridge, with his tank landing on him afterwards.
Abandoning their T-34, the crew reunites with Anya they carry the wounded Volchok towards the Russian lines.
The film ends with a dedication to the Red Army tank crews of the Great Patriotic War.