euro4evr

I am Russian and I've seen this movie last year. The only reason why I give some positive points to this movie is because it was based on apparently a great fantasy story. Unfortunately, due to the immature MTV-style perspective of Russian filmmakers the movie ended up like piece of trash. I totally agree to the first reviewer in everything he describes. Surely, it has cool visual effects and all that. But you would be wondering that maybe they are too cool? By that I mean that, they give visual effect attention to things which are just bare minor details, rather than concentrating on improving the crucial plot subjects. That's why at first it may seem that this movie has no plot. Of course, when you devote so much screen time to show billions of cg crows, there is barely any time left to develop the story, and that's why it almost seemed like the movie was just some unrelated campfire tales package. Russian cinema has still much to learn. They were aiming too high thinking this will be a Russian LOTR with the approach they chose. The morale is that if you are about to make a high budget project, spend the money wisely on it. Now, since Fox owes the franchise, we hope they will make a good remake and the sequels.

I am Russian and I just checked this movie out because i heard so much about it. I find this movie OK. It's not a masterpiece. But it's much better than the other Russian blockbuster Night Watch. However, both of these films have something bad in common and it's the immature obsession of excessive cheesy visual effects. When watching these high budget movies you start thinking the filmmakers forget that it's not the visual effects that make movie a good movie. Those parts in the movie, where they show the dark abyss all the time and then this LOTR style map pops up with a wheel falling down - it just doesn't look good, it looks totally tasteless. I mean the producers spent so much resources to make all those costumes and setups, but when you see something like this, it just ruins the whole point. Bad bad taste. Hopefully, in future Russian filmmakers will grow out this unhealthy obsession and start making great and stylish movies.