Obitaemyy ostrov. Skhvatka

The director Fiodor Bondarchuk seems himself to be under the influence of the dangerous "A-rays", declaring unconditional faithfulness to the letter on the original Book, and not paying any attention to how it plays out as a film.

The book has all the elements needed for a Star Wars-like scenario: it creates a complete detailed world full with its history ("Noon Universe"); it has a number of mysteries that are gradually revealed to the reader - "I'm your father, Luke!" type moments and more. It has a number of philosophical connotations about historical necessities and taking responsibility for people's destiny. It is an epic masterpiece.

But! The authors of the 1968 book didn't think about turning it into a sci-fi movie. The majority of the book is written from the view point of its heroes, describing their feelings and thoughts. Dialogue and action takes secondary role.

So this book was taken and stripped off of any and all non-action language, and turned into a scenario. The result is extremely fast-paced, bullet-point-like re-telling of the main events of the book.

The act is horrible across the board. Of special notice is Koldun (Enchanter), which is all about the voice. This is the voice that reads out what can be thought as A. & B. Strugatsky's (ABS) actual position on the main dilemma. This voice is delivering one of the main messages of the film. The movie creators recognized that, and turned the Koldun scene into a separate scene, as opposed to being part of the "Meeting". But the voice is absolutely unremarkable, and just quickly reads through the text.

As a side note - the Bomber is just pathetic. The bomber itself is not significant altogether, and could be just left out. But it was left in, and instead of a complex technical scene involving a large airplane, the creators opted for a cheaper CG solution. This is strange to say the least, given the $40M budget of the film.

There are lots of good SF movies, but I cannot remember any, which has not bad pictures and leaves unanswered questions in your mind after you visit the cinema. The movie which is unrealistic on the one hand and has so many similarities with our daily life on the other. The movie where there is no evil and no goodness, where you see just people and you can make a decision who is good and who is bad. It's up to you.

It's a pity that people estimate quality of such movies by the quality of the visual effects without thinking what authors wanted to say. May be visual effects are not that good for 40M USD, but they are right enough for this movie. A little bit more and we have a traditional Hollywood delirium with good pictures, lots of noise and nothing inside.

This movie is a direct continuation of the first film "Inhabited Island" or "Obitaemyi Ostrov." It continues in the same great style and pace as the first film, but you have to see the first film to understand the storyline.

This movie is particularly great because there is a lot of action and great visuals, but a very interesting plot and deep philosophical ideas are what make it a truly great film. While it is science fiction, it is different from many science fiction films in that at the end of the day this is a movie about us: people living on this Earth today. We too have oppressive government regimes controlling the masses, we too have people among us fighting for ideas of justice. The end is very well done and leaves one thinking.

It is something else than Hollywood. Strugatsky brothers are fabulous writers, but you cannot simply take a book and put it on the screen. In a movie you don't have the luxury to waste pages after pages describing the introspections of the characters. The director did his best, and at least the actors felt for the script. No wooden acting, no clichéd lines which are the hallmark of Hollywood SF in the last decades. People are as true as possible, they are dirty, grimy and miserable, easy to manipulate and picturesque. All in all, a good movie, interesting and it never makes you touch the fast-forward button. If you want to taste something else than Hollywood crap, try it.

For the Russian audience, this film is perceived not only as went a parody of the story Strugatsky brothers, but also wipe over by the audience. Strugatsky very complex philosophical authors, not all their ideas were relevant fact, the more you want it careful cost to such material, and even more so not to make tragedy in the farce.

Game actors and staging the film in the amount of leaves much to be desired. The only that makes sense to set off - it sounds and special effects. Still, for $ 37 million could have been done better.

We need to just keep in mind that this is not a separate proekt.

The first film was blatantly political. Given circumstances prevailing at the time of his release, he was very negative received by the audience. For this reason, the second part, some political tone was subdued, though that is not reflected in the general mood paintings. Despite strong advertising campaign in media and public support, we can say that the amount of the project has fallen short of its expectations, neither as a commercial enterprise, or as promotional material.