Zerkalnye voyny. Otrazhenie pervoe

I do not usually take the time to write reviews, but I had to say something about this movie. This was a B movie trying to be more - which it could have been. I watched it because it had two of my faves - Malcolm McDowell and Rutger Hauer. I ask them why such good actors, especially Malcolm, would degrade themselves by being in this movie. The story is just so-so. It could have been a good story but it had some major inconsistencies and illogics that made the story look stupid (in some parts). The photography was decent. And the action wasn't too bad. What made it a B movie was the despicable dub-in. Did they hire bums off the street to do this? Most of the voices sounded like robots. No life. The one doing the the voice for the American girl was very obviously Russian. If they hired two well known American actors for the movie, why couldn't they hire an American to dub in for an American character? Very unprofessional. These Russian film makers need to go back to film school. And probably marketing school too. If they invested money to hire American actors to sell their movie - which they obviously did - they wasted their money because the above unprofessionalism negated what they did right. The fact that I voted as high as 5 shows how much they blew it, because with just a bit more effort and professionalism they could have had a much better product.

I was waiting for this movie for a long time. After all, it's the first Russian movie with Rutger Hauer, my favourite actor. According the first news about "Mirror Wars: Reflection One" - it will be screen version of "Labyrinth of Reflections" - the novel by Sergey Lukyanenko, the author of the "NightWatch" trilogy. However, fortunately, those rumors was fake ("Labyrinth of Reflections" or "Glubina" will be filming in the next year, double fortunately, without Rutger) - "Mirror Wars: Reflection One" - spy action movie about Russian air forces and new interceptor "Sabretooth". Some terrorist organization which wants to get hold it, so Mysterious Man (Hauer) gave order to Dick Murdock (McDowell) - ex-CIA agent, who became a first class terrorist after being captured in China - to provoke conflict between USA and Russia with "Sabretooth". However, Alexei Kedrov (Efimov) - the brave pilot of "Sabretooth" don't want to give the interceptor to the bad guys.

The whole film isn't bad (there is some good action scenes on the earth and in the air), but sometime it's a slightly inconsistently and boring. Seems, all movie budget was spent for action scenes, plane crashings (very effective - without CG!) and three foreign actors. As about Russian actors - for many of them "Mirror Wars: Reflection One" was their first movie. Their performance is rather boring and unnatural - in contrast to their foreign colleagues. McDowell is great villain, Assante - in good traditions of his old movies, Hauer - mysterious charismatic old man. So... 5 out of 10, I think.

Why did I watch this? That's easy: Rutger Hauer is in it. But I can safely say don't watch this rubbish for him, as Mr. Hauer has approximately 2 minutes of screen time, divided over two brief scenes. Of course it's not his fault that DVD distributors put his name in big letters on the cover, right next to Malcolm McDowell and Armand Assante. The rest of the cast is compiled out of a bunch of unknown Russian actors - at least in my country they are unknown - with dubbed voices and zero acting talent.

The plot tries to be some sort of international, political-flavored spy intrigue with weapon smugglers, environmental activists, some hotshot jet pilots and it all involves a top secret, hi-tech, newly developed stealth fighter jet (which looks just like any other jet plane, really). Along the way the plot also incorporates an attempted assault on Air Force One (including the president on board) in mid-air.

About 25 minutes into the movie I was still thinking "What the hell is going on here?". It doesn't really matter what this film is about. It doesn't matter the plot can't really focus on anything decently. It doesn't really matter this film is filled with cardboard characters. It's all a heap of nonsense. Boring nonsense at that too. And badly made. Abslolute low-point was an obligatory "let's fall in love" sequence with one of the pilots - who on top of that has underdeveloped issues with his father, inventor of the stealth jet - and a female environmental activist that turns out to be a spy too. Man, that sequence was so toe-curlingly bad you won't believe it. A walk in the woods, lots of laughing & fooling around. A boat-ride. Some kissing. And then back to the tent to have sex. All this on the tunes of dreadful music. I was under the impression the 80's were over. Apparently not in Russia. All the music in this film pretty much stinks to high heavens, for that matter. And this film features a lot of music.

Things blow up. People get shot. The jet gets saved and the bad guys get away. Or something. Like I cared. Complete rubbish. I still can't believe I watched the whole thing.

I wasn't expecting much out of the film, but they do tout lots of impressive live action air scenes, which sounded appealing to me. And in truth, there are some. But most are simply stuff you'd find in an air show, I was expecting more in the way of dogfights. There is a dogfight eventually, but it consists of 2 CGI F-15s shooting 3 CGI missiles at the plane, and the plane "dodging" them.

Basically, the highlight is a live action air scenes is maneuver called a "Cobra", where the plane sort of rears back on its tail in a controlled manner. Which is neat, but not the sort of thing that wows people who don't understand what the maneuver is (though I guess is probably very popular in Russia, since I believe they invented it). The most impressive action scene is not in the air, but a battle on an air base, between Russian special forces (I think) and terrorists.

Anyway, the plot of this is a little hard to follow. There's a super secret new Russian plane (actually just a SU-30, a nice enough plane, but nothing special). And terrorists are trying to do something to the pilots. Then we find out that it's Malcom McDowell who is the terrorist, and ex-CIA agent, with Armad Assante being a current CIA agent trying to stop him (or something). Rutger Hauer is technically in this, but he's in two scenes. And just what he is, I wasn't sure.

The trouble is, it's long. A lot of the story focuses on the "good" pilot, who isn't a jerk like the others. We see him fall in love with an American animal rights person (?) who looks 100% Russian (pretty, but doesn't even remotely look American), then he has some angst with his father (who is the designer of the plane, I think), and the antics of the other pilots. That stuff should have been trimmed out. And much of the spy stuff is boring. You have Malcom McDowell vs Armand Assante's team of CIA (I think) along with a Russian duo (who are likable, but not overly competent). They play a cat and mouse game, but it's hard to know what exactly is going on.

It does suffer from a bad English dubbing, but there are worse. Much much worse. It's passable. The real problem is all the dull scenes. Cut it out and it would have been a good movie. As is, it's worth a watch, but not great.

i watched this because i wanted to see the SU-30.Its a very rare opportunity to see any real Russian fighter because in most well known aviator movies of the 80's like Top Gun and Iron Eagle,American producers couldn't get their hands on Russian aircraft using ridiculous substitutes ,usually as MIGS,planes like F-5's and even Phantoms. So if you want to see a real Russian plane its in this movie. The gimmick about it being a super special plane was not needed at all,they could have had the same story with terrorists wanting to hijack the real plane without having to make up a story about an imaginary plane. However i think the aerial scenes leave a lot to be desired.If only these Russian guys who made this movie could at least get that right. The rest of the movie suffers from the obvious fact the producers wanted to sell it to the American market.I mean if there is something more ridiculous than Russian pilots and generals speaking badly dubbed English,and American English at that,i don't know what that is.That was the most annoying thing for me.Actually some of the Russian actors didn't do a bad job but the dubbing made their performance sound like some guy reading a newspaper in his toilet. Also i didn't see the point of not hiring a couple of cheap European and American actors to play the respective parts.I mean,the lead female is obviously a Russian actress playing an American.I'm sure they could have hired a non-name American actress who would do a more believable job. All these things i think could have been avoided and with the same budget. Out of the 3 names Assante does an OK job,McDowell is good as the villain,Hauer appears very briefly.