AllMovie

For almost a decade, the U.S.S.R. was involved in a long and apparently pointless war in Afghanistan, which began with an effort to keep a communist puppet government in power and ended with the huge Russian war machine slinking out of the primitive country in disgrace. The war may have been the straw that broke the back of the so-called "evil empire," as it began disbanding shortly afterwards. This Italian/U.S.S.R. co-production follows what happens to one officer and his disheartened soldiers, as they try to make it possible for their countrymen to retreat from the unforgiving country at the end of the conflict.