Obitaemyy ostrov

The original book is a classic in Russia, and contains enough material (and in high enough quality) to create a Start Wars-like series of films. What was done instead was extremely fast-paced bullet-point-like re-telling of the classic story. No suspense, no tension that was present at all stages in the book.

The screenplay sticks to the original dialogue almost verbatim. A serious mistake in my view: the director seems to be afraid of the book fans, and doesn't dare to touch anything in the original. But the original dialogue was backed by a lot of description of internal thinking of the heroes - which cannot be shown on the screen. The result - the storyline is flat and uninteresting, instead of the intriguing and fascinating story in the book.

The actors' play is a total fiasco - except, maybe Strannik ("Strider") - but his role is relatively simple. Everybody else looks like they're reading from a phone book - which probably has to do with the fact that the dialogues were left as-is, see above.

I do appreciate the effort to create an "exoplanet" look of everyday things (cars, glasses, forks, plates, food, clothes etc). The things created would be unusable, but had the desired unusual look.

Overall, disappointing, and leaves a taste of a missed opportunity.

This attempt at bringing a Strugatski brothers novel to the modern Russian screen is without a doubt a success.

A little about the plot: young explorer Maksim Kammerer crash lands on Sarakhsh, a world enveloped by nebula gasses where people have never seen the stars. The Unknown Fathers, a group of local oligarchs, brainwash the population to fear and despise surrounding nations. Kammerer, aloof in his assumed superiority, sets out to free the people of Sarahksh of oppression and paranoia.

I wont ramble on - suffice to say that Bondarchuk has done well considering the scale of the novel. Vasiliy Stepanov (as Maksim Kammerer) is sexy, cool and a blond head taller than his alien companions (a fine nod to the novel and a detail I did not expect). He was also most excellent in the action scenes.

Bondarchuk shines in his portrayal of Umnik (The Clever One). I really enjoyed the scenes of him writhing in agony in the bath. A great performance. I am compelled after reading some of the other comments to say that the novel, like this movie, is quite comical...

Direction-wise there are some minor continuity errors and a few places where pace slows, but the film sticks quite closely to the novel and this may not have been avoidable.

Compared with the contemporary adaptation of the Strugatskis Ugly Swans by Konstantin Lopushansky the film is of course rather crude and soulless. But it's good fun done right.

I recommend it to everyone and will be waiting for film two.

... for the movie cooked from all possible clichés. Let's call it "a movie of the future": no interesting dialogues, no interesting character dynamics, sexually decent, a product. Not only lacking a point, but totally chaotic at the end. Much like a ruined orgasm. Actually, there were lots of completely confusing moments all along. Main character was so artificially angelic beautiful - in a nonsense commercial-romantic way, that it was almost disgusting to watch.

The only positive things was a vision of the perverse futuristic world, dark, totalitarian, rainy, muddy, technocratic, but also kind of futuristic baroque. A bit reminding me of 5th element, or Chronicles of Riddick. (Or just today.) So much more interesting plots, events, interaction could have been set in this environment.

It's 2011 ... and you want a science-fiction? Watch Aliens, Avatar, Abyss, Terminator or at least Matrix.

Can't understand all this negative hysteria. Most of which is actually about nothing ("crap! oh, such a crap! totally crap!" often mentioning that Bondarchuk is a bad director). Well, I can partly understand those who admired the original book (which is really worth reading) as they may have imagined everything in different manner (this is particularly true for sci-fi adaptations). But very often I read comments of people who seemed to be negatively oriented even before they really watched the film.

The movie is not piece of art. It really takes a lot from classic sci-fi movies (from costumes designs to city views). And directing sometimes is confusing. But the film has one strong point - the plot, original story that authors reflected rather well. Special effects are good (they were performed by American specialists), acting is not bad (dramatic acting usually is not required in sci-fi action movies). In essence, the movie is good and worth seeing. Don't take negative comments for granted.

BTW as far as I know Boris Strugaztsky (the one of two brothers who is still alive) liked the adaptation.

When i first watched this movie, i thought it was very chaotic. There was many questions, also the ending was very disappointing. Like their intentions was good but the writers & the director's mind was very unclear. Then i learned it's actually longer, it was actually 2 movie. First one released 2008 second was 2009. Then i found longer version (was hard to find) Longer version was just a little bit better. At least it answed some questions. And can't believe they cut really good scenes for make it short. Yet there need to be part 3 too, its still half baked. (Btw the main character was so handsome and cute at same time but why the f* he smiles for everything? Like the director said him: hey boy you don't need to act, just smile, they gone love you anyway.