Firing Range

Firing Range (Russian: Полигон Polygon) is a 1977 short Soviet Science Fiction animated film by Anatoly Petrov. The plot is based on an anti-war short story by Sever Gansovsky. An inventor has made a tank that reads minds and can sense the fear and hostility someone in danger has- and only will fire if it senses it. He sells it to the generals that drafted his son into the war. The son died, and was awarded a posthumous medal. The inventor planned to let the machine kill the generals, as he knew they feared their own weapons. The inventor is happy to have his revenge, but that's never been what his son wanted. The machine turns on him when he realizes in fear that getting revenge is not what he should have done.

It won the Official Selection of Oberhausen, Germany in 1979 and the First Prize Yerevan, USSR in 1978. It remains a powerful anti-war statement and uses an impressive animation technique known as photographica, a highly realistic style before computers.

The full film can be found here.


 * Author Tract
 * Best Served Cold
 * Book Ends: A single dove flying across the sky.
 * Conspicuously Light Patch: Averted.
 * Deadly Dodging
 * Dream Sequence
 * Emotion Eater: The machine doesn't move until it senses fear.
 * Emotion Bomb
 * The Empath- The machine will fire when it senses fear and hostility.
 * Flash Back: The inventor flashes back to times with his now-deceased son to the times when he was happy. After killing all of the generals, he has another flashback and tells his son that he did it for him. The son runs away, scared.
 * Gone Horribly Right
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: The inventor is also killed by his own invention after letting it kill the generals.
 * It's Personal: The inventor of the machine sells it to the general who gave his son a posthumous medal after the war. He knew the machine would turn on them.
 * Laughing Mad: After one of the generals gives up because he was running so long, he laughs.
 * Off-Model: Weird animation shifts are present, due to early unpracticed use of photographica technique.
 * Real Is Brown
 * Revenge
 * Scenery Porn
 * Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: Intertwining of the two is used almost bizarrely.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future
 * Uncanny Valley: The photographica animation technique made the characters have realistic faces of movie stars at the time. It gives a very creepy effect.
 * Your Mind Makes It Real: in a way. The tank is perfectly harmless as long as nobody is afraid of it. Once they do, however, it will destroy them, even using the exact ideas they imagine.
 * Weapon of Mass Destruction
 * War Is Hell