This trench-warfare tale is its country’s biggest box-office success, but it is guilty of some bad misfires

The Rifleman is the top-grossing film of all time at the Latvian box office and if you had to guess at the kind of film that would inspire such nationwide enthusiasm, you’d guess it was something like this: a lavishly mounted, lion-hearted first world war epic based on a book banned by the Soviets for 60 years.

Oto Brantevics stars as Arturs, a 16-year-old who signs up in 1915 to fight the Germans, alongside his brother Edgars (Raimonds Celms) and father Vanags (Martins Vilsons). Both Arturs and his dad are outside the required age range for the army, but rules are bent on account of the father’s exceptional marksmanship. Thus, three men of the same family set off to war, fighting sometimes for the Tsar, sometimes for the Red Army – but always,...