Le Gardien des mondes

Sergey Lukyanenko's books are a treasure trove of ideas, and should lend themselves well to adaptations. Night Watch was a good one. Chernovik, however, is a mess. Too much has been crammed into a single movie. The visuals are spectacularly, but the numbers of characters, worlds, the weird transitions, the lack of character development or even fleshing, makes it nearly impossible to follow. Paradoxaly, the rhythm lulls several times in the movie, and keeping attention is difficult. Too bad.

I know nothing of the books, but shouldn't need to if the script was tight. It was not.

The main character's bizarre obsession with one woman and seemingly effortless adjustment to his new surreal job and surroundings had me rewinding several times, certain I'd missed something that explained what was happening.

I had not.

Also, none of the frequent Russian text displayed on the screen is translated, which is super annoying.

Don't let a few interesting visuals in the previews fool you. The rest are embarrassingly bad.

Kirill (Nikita Volkov) has a great life as a very successful video game designer; he has lots of friends, loving parents and a beautiful girlfriend, not to mention a loyal dog. But one evening when he returns to his apartment, he finds a stranger there - a woman named Renata (Severija Janusauskaite) who insists that the apartment (and the dog) belongs to her. In trying to straighten the situation out, Kirill soon discovers that all of his documentation has somehow disappeared from official records, his boss doesn't know him and worse, neither do his friends or even his parents. He is now at the mercy of Renata, who instructs him to go to a tower, where he will serve as the customs officer, opening doors to other worlds. And he's very good at what he does.... This sketchy description barely scratches the surface of this film, which is full of gorgeous imagery (steampunk vehicles, graceful dirigibles and terrifying flying matryoshka dolls) and out-of-this-world fight scenes. Really fun stuff, if bewildering at times.

Film without the slightest sense, poorly written and with an avalanche of both logical and plot holes. In general the film opens very well giving you a very good introduction that makes you empathize with the protagonist and makes you enter completely into the story, but after the beginning the film begins to decline in quality, meaning and continuity as if they had lost the desire to make the film, and in the end you wonder how it could have happened to this film to degenerate in this way.

I like the story-

Kirill (Nikita Volkov) returns home after a work celebration to find someone else living in his apartment. Soon he finds that no one remembers him- Not even the government! He discovers he has been chosen to be a customs agent, a person who can open doors to other worlds.

This movie feels like a rough draft. There was so much touched upon and and crammed into this movie. It would have done well to expand some parts of the storyline. The romance between Kirill and Anna had no depth or resolution. Although there were a few touching moments they weren't long enough to let you care.

Since this was an English dubbed film I must say the voice actors were mediocre. There was a part in the beginning where an actor is speaking and you only hear Kirill reply. Emotion is not always relayed and it takes away from the actors' intention.

There were a couple of neat little action scenes, some special effects and glimpses of other worlds. Scenes with Kirill and Kotya seemed natural.

This has at least inspired me to find the books and have a read.