Zapreshchyonnaya realnost

The only good thing about this movie is that it is quite short. All the time of watching it I have been hesitating - to stay or to leave. At last I decided to watch until the end just because I was too lazy to make any additional moves. It is the kind of movie which is possible to watch in three cases only - 1) you are underage; 2) you are drunk; 3) you are one of the cast or crew. I am nothing of above. I even didn't like how it was cut technically. It almost had no any bright color smears. Looked constantly grey - even not like made in black and white - that would be classic - but boring grey. And that terrible electronic set of sounds - I cannot call it music... And it is to say nothing of the plot. When a powerful organization instead of just sending a sniper to kill a lonely guy on the lake sends a moto boat full of stupid freaks with guns... Just because it would be more picturesque when you watch it on a big screen...

The dazzling, Russian-made, sleekly super-charged, science fiction, thrill-overkill, 'Zapreshchyonnaya realnost' aka 'The Interceptor' (2009) is a frequently exciting, supremely polished, visually spectacular, Tech-noir/action extravaganza that, entirely curiously, has yet to establish much of a fan base who would vociferously extol the film's all-too considerable merits! While the convoluted narrative of crypto-evil corporations and their gleefully grandiose, internecine struggles for total world dominance/annihilation is, to be fair, entirely derivative, and not just a little bit uninspired, and while, regretfully, 'The Interceptor' occasionally over-eggs certain sequences, thereby stretching all plausibility to the giddiest extremes of B-Movie absurdity, it is never once dull or sickly-sentimental, and for this most welcome boon, I can readily forgive these momentary lapses into tired sci-fi tropisms. And having 'The Interceptor' generously endowed with a suitably masculine male protagonist in the steel-thewed, heroically-handsome figure of fleet-footed special forces butt-kicker, Matvey Sobolov,(Igor Petrenko), merely increased the sinuous authenticity of this altogether exhilarating, gravity-defying, 'super-dude against the nefarious machinations of some esoteric, supernatural, super-weapon wielding villain' adrenalized action-fest, that any less judgmental fan of 'Nemesis', 'Day Watch' or 'Equilibrium' might well enjoy as much as I did!

Writer-director Konstantin Maksimov had a unique story to tell with a unique vision. Unfortunately he wasn't capable of conveying the message very clearly. The visuals are striking, but not much of the film or characters are explained, leaving the viewer dangling wondering what to make of it all. There are some nice action sequences, but they're few and far between and the accompanying music is very bland. Although the actors are trying their best, the plot is just too confusing for it to make sense.

As much as I hate to say it this seems to be Russia's response to "The Matrix", an awe-inspiring orgiastic extravaganza with revelatory fight scenes and a twist on what is reality. This version of Neo is a special operative Ivakin (Andrey Chubchenko), who in the opening scene tumbles from a plane through forest coverage and miraculously survives. From then on we get to meet Georgiy Kurylo (Aleksandr Baluev), a political figure with dark unclear plans (left unclear even after the end credits). Enter guns, hot chicks, fast cars, big blasts and a lot of meaningless filler.

A movie with such visual pizazz, but lacking any constructive build to punch home a semblance of coherency. Instead viewers are overladen with imagery, that is supposed to somehow supplant a story. The other extreme of American blockbusters, which feel the need to disclose every single detail, this pic goes to lengths to avoid explaining anything. The characters remain empty shells, which lack any emotional pull. It is essentially nothing more than a random sequence of extremely well-conceived, inpenetrable and imaginative set pieces and/or VFX, barely guled together by a convoluted and unfocused story, which does it's best to create an alienating experience.

By the end you don't really care about the story, what happens to our heroes or where this will take us in future outings. What's worse you stop even admiring the view.

While I have enjoyed some of Russian movies made in latter years, and grew to very much like some of Russian actors and actresses, I could not possibly say the same about this movie. This movie originally had quite a good potential - some pretty nice sci-fi hero storyline to begin with (and don't tell me that books are better, much better - I already know that and that is true in almost every case), a quite strong young Russian actor for a lead (Petrenko), but the result is more than lousy. Kind of the movie was about nothing. Did anyone get what it was about or what it was meant to be about? I did not. And all the time during viewing it felt as if I was wasting my time, which was quite true at the end. Here I must agree with the other comment on this movie that the visual greyness throughout the movie was tiresome and rather annoying. If that was part of FXs introduced to create some special atmosphere, then it totally and ultimately failed. Actually this movie IMHO failed in every possible aspect as it haven't delivered a story nor a likable characters (I doubt if even the very true fans of actors' could possible have found anything at all to enjoy this time).

For a conclusion, I would like to say here that I doubt no more in Russians' abilities to make a good FXs, but respectively they also could realize that strong FXs and nothing to support 'em cannot make a trick of a good movie no more. We've seen that in Daywatch and Nightwatch, but to watch so many movies with FXs and non-existent story lines is getting just too much. Move on, please.