Tangerines. The turning of tables.

Warning: This blogpost contains major spoilers, and assumes you've already seen the Estonian-Georgian film Tangerines.

In a recent IMDb post, a user wondered, if Ahmed had grown to like Niko a lot, which caused Ahmed to shoot the Russians. Here's my response:

(As was specified in the post's thread, it was only heavily implied that these were Russians, because it's not said so on-screen.)

And so, near the end, Ahmed was playing his part as he did before (covering for Niko), but the Russians were actively provoking Ahmed (who had been fighting as a mercenary on their side), and were very disrespectful towards him, because they didn't believe that he was a Chechen and on their side.

As far as I could see, they were ready to kill Ahmed anyway, but then Niko intervened, and then Ahmed killed the Russians.

So, it wasn't because Ahmed had grown close to Niko, but that in the nick of time, Niko saved Ahmed's life, and they had to protect themselves and their hosts Ivo and Margus.

Before things went downhill, Ivo had thought that he could de-escalate the situation as he did before, but Niko saw from the window, that these weren't mercenaries, so he essentially knew better.

All in all, it didn't end well in the film.

As it is, it's a fairly realistic film about war, because death happens, and usually, both sides lose in one or another way. Or that neither side wins convincingly.

While it's not rare, that one of the parties wins, then recent history has shown, that a definite victory does not happen often. That's why it's called a win, because chances are, that one could lose, too. The victors may realize the subsequent loss only after war ends, and after some time has passed to reflect on the events; especially, if it was not a just war.