Krasnyy shelk

At two and a half hours in length Red Silk is an hour too long. I can't reveal the end of the movie to you because I walked out after two hours after having been provided the example of another guy in my row who left - I thought at first he was headed to the men's room then realized he had his coat on.

It's just an endless series of dramatic confrontations of stereotypical characters you have seen many times before: here is the beautiful young rich girl, nobly helping her good-hearted industrialist father to do the right thing by the salt of the earth workers, but wait Oh no! Father has just been shot by the evil warlord who sneers evilly and of course is blind in one eye - because how could you have a villian who is not physically disfigured, just as how could you have a heroine or hero who are not young and good-looking? Speaking of our young good-looking hero, here he is, entering right on cue with a meet-cute.

Much doe-eyed flirting ensues, punctuated by an unending stream of shootings, explosions, scalding, stabbing, with loud dramatic music indicating crescendo after crescendo. Lots of shooting, large and small caliber weapons, auto and semi-automatic, revolvers and rifles. See people jump off a cliff. See computer graphic 1920s trains steaming through digitally produced snow. See a locomotive explode. See a train steaming through snow. See an iceboat on Lake Baikal. The train is still steaming through that snow. You've got your pick of period small arms if you have that interest. I didn't. Did I mention there is a train traveling through Siberian snow?

The plotline is straightforward - Team Good Guys must transport Super Secret Information from China to Moscow, and Team Bad Guys try to stop them. But wait! Is there A Traitor?? Our heroes have caught The Villian. Or have they?? If the viewer is aged under about 14 there may be surprises, but likely not - the "twists" here are telegraphed to the viewer and you have seen this storyline before. Many times before. It's boring.

I watched this movie in the cinema, and I liked it very much for the following reasons: 1. Amazing cast. Milosh Bicovich, Elena Podkaminskaya are starring actors in this movie. They are real professionals in the cinematography. They seem to be able to act any emotion.

2. Exciting plot. When you are watching this movie, you don't know what is going to happen in one minute or even one second. Also, during the watching, you are investigating the murder of one of the characters with Red Army officer, and anyone can turn out to be a betrayer.

3. Quality of shooting and special effects. Everything is done at the highest level.

4. The places of shooting. The shooting took place in the Far East, in Russia. So, if you are from that region, you will enjoy beautiful landscapes of your home region.

To sum up, in my opinion, everyone should watch this spectacular movie!

What happens if you try to repeat the style of Guy Ricci, take the plot of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" and try to play it up with the sauce of "Faster than a Bullet"? It sounds interesting, but in reality... But first things first.

I very rarely go to the cinema to watch Russian films. That's how they have proven themselves. Unfortunately, a new experience confirmed my fears. But that's not the point now. I decided to give this film a chance, although I already saw from the trailer an obvious carbon copy of the work about Hercule Poirot. And what did I see? Let's be honest, first about the obvious advantages of the film.

Pros:

Acting. I can't say anything bad about this aspect, quite the opposite. Milos Bikovic is charming and good. He plays effortlessly and you want to believe him. Gleb Kalyuzhny, Zheng Hanyi, Gosha Kutsenko and Huang Haonan also did well. These actors really tried! And, frankly, without Bikovic and Kalyuzhny this film would be impossible to watch.

Visuals. The picture really looks expensive and spectacular in places. A couple of action scenes look cheap (at the level of Hollywood of the late 90s), but spectacular. But this, unfortunately, concerns only a small share of scenes.

Alas, that's where the pros end. Now let's list the obvious cons.

Cons:

Elena Podkaminskaya. Her performance reminded me of Cate Blanchett's character from "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Everyone remembers how caricatured and stupid that character looked? It's exactly the same here. Constant overacting and strained delivery. That's all there is to the least interesting character in this film.

Directing. I will highlight this aspect especially, because Andrey Volgin decided to jump above his head. It is not the first time he tries to copy the style of Western filmmakers, but this time he took aim at Guy Ricci. I am not exaggerating. Remember the mind-blowing scene from Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in the forest? Now imagine that a person saw it, told it to his friend, the friend told it, being drunk, to his girlfriend, the girlfriend to your grandmother, and the grandmother to your grandfather, and he to you. What came out in the end is this very scene from Andrey Volgin's creation, chewed over five times and only a pale parody. And there are a lot of such "borrowings" here! Hand-held shooting, slow-mo, quick editing, object tracking, tracking stabilization and object (character) tying. Everything that Ricci uses, Volgin also tries to use clumsily. And no, Mr. Ricci does not have an unconditional patent right to it. But if you are going to copy, then do it well, not like that.

The script. An incredibly lazy plot, with a certain MacGuffin that everyone is running after (or with) from the beginning to the end of the film. And no, like with the painting from RocknRolla or the suitcase from Pulp Fiction, we are not told the full value of this object. But in the cases mentioned, it was artistically and cleverly played out. And here? What kind of documents? Why are they needed? What are they capable of? Gentlemen, these are not infinity stones capable of destroying the universe. And not a list of all spies behind enemy lines. This is simply a list of names. Which ones? Why? Who? Don't expect an answer to this question. We are being made to understand in no uncertain terms that this was a list of all oppositionists to the new People's Republic of China, then I would understand why the Soviets and the PRC need it, but why do the Japanese need it, who does the shadow villain work for (a twist for the sake of a twist)? The whole plot is sewn with white threads and literally falls apart when you try to clarify anything. Deliberately complicated and pretentious, it tries to be clever, but it doesn't work.

There are still many minuses, like unremarkable music, weak special effects. And don't complain about the budget. $8 million. This is a good budget for Russian cinema. Let me remind you that "Godzilla: Minus One" cost $15 million. And won an Oscar for best visual effects.

I still believe in Russian cinema. But "Red Silk" only added new doubts rather than increased my faith.

5 out of 10.