A college friend of mine had gone from judo instructor to Self-Defense Force soldier, and when I asked him what triggered his move, he replied that in modern-day Japan, the SDF was the quickest way to attaining inner calm and career satisfaction. "It's not like I actually have to fight in a war," he said. "This way, it's all about bravery with no complicated strings attached."

I remember thinking how single-minded and smart this guy was; from what we've seen of the SDF recently, it certainly is about heroism without the moral complexities of combat and destruction. But no such luck is in store for the professional military man — and this truth has deafening reverberations in the case of Kotov, an aged private in the Soviet Army circa 1944 in "Burnt by the Sun 2: Exodus."

Its predecessor, "Burnt by the Sun," won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film 16 years ago — and it's rumored that filmmaker/actor Nikita Mikhalkov waited all these years to make the sequel because he wished to give everyone in the cast, including himself, the opportunity to age and mature naturally (most of the original cast have reassembled for the project, which is a feat in itself).