The Beast of War

The Beast
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kevin Reynolds
Written by	William Mastrosimone
Starring	George Dzundza Jason Patric Steven Bauer Stephen Baldwin Erick Avari Don Harvey
Music by	Mark Isham
Cinematography	Douglas Milsome
Edited by	Peter Boyle
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	September 16, 1988
Running time	111 min.
Country	United States
Language	English Pashto
Box office	$160.000

The Beast (also known as The Beast of War) is a 1988 American war film directed by Kevin Reynolds and based on a William Mastrosimone play Nanawatai. The plot concerns a Soviet T-55 tank lost during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The movie has enjoyed a cult-favorite status in spite of its low box office statistics.

The film is prefaced with a quotation from the poem "The Young British Soldier" by Rudyard Kipling:

When you're wounded an' left on Afghanistan's plains
An' the women come out to cut up your remains
Jus' roll to your rifle an' blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

In 1981 Afghanistan, a Soviet tank unit viciously attacks a Pashtun village harboring a group of mujahideen fighters. Following the assault, one of the tanks, commanded by the ruthless Commander Daskal (George Dzundza), gets separated from the unit and enters a blind valley. Taj (Steven Bauer) returns to discover the village destroyed, his father killed and his brother martyred by being crushed under the tank, to serve as execution for disabling and killing a Russian tank crew. As the new khan, following his brother's death, Taj is spurred to seek revenge by his cousin, the opportunistic scavenger Mustafa - and together they lead a band of mujahideen fighters into the valley to pursue the separated tank, counting on their captured RPG-7 anti-tank weapon to destroy it.

The tank's crew is made up of four Soviets and an Afghan communist soldier. As night falls and the crew sets up camp, the Afghan tank crewman Samad (Erick Avari) educates the tank driver, Konstantin Koverchenko (Jason Patric), about the fundamental principles of Pashtunwali, the Pashtun people's code of honour: milmastia (hospitality), badal (revenge), and nanawatai, which requires even an enemy to be given sanctuary if he asks. As the plot progresses, Commander Daskal (called "Tank Boy" during World War II for destroying a number of German tanks when he was a child soldier during the Battle of Stalingrad) demonstrates his ruthlessness not only to the enemy, but also to his own men. He despises Samad for his ethnic association to the enemy and, after a couple of attempts to kill him, finally gets his wish on the pretext of suspecting Samad of collaborating with the mujahadeen. After Koverchenko threatens to report Daskal for the killing, Daskal entraps him and orders Kaminski (Don Harvey) and Golikov (Stephen Baldwin) to tie him to a rock, with a grenade behind his head to serve as booby-trap for the mujahideen. Some wild dogs come upon him and as Koverchenko tries to kick at them, the grenade rolls down the rock and explodes, killing several dogs but leaving Konstantin unhurt. A group of women from the village, who had been trailing the mujahideen to offer their support, come across Koverchenko and begin to stone him, calling for his blood as revenge (badal). As the mujahideen approach, Koverchenko recalls the term nanawatai (sanctuary) and repeats it until Taj cuts him free, and allows him to follow their procession. That night, hidden in a cave, the fighters eat and Taj asks Koverchenko in broken language if he will fix their non-functioning RPG-7, and help them destroy the tank.