The Blackout

First of all, it kept me entertained from start to finish. The pace of it (story) and the visuals were there. I'd say, the camera work was well above par, astounding even, and the CGI works were also outstanding, up there with the 200 million dollars Hollywood blockbusters. That said, the character development was poor. There were some real joy in waiting character-wise that never happened. A waste. There was also too much killing, unnecessarily. But the story was good, believable and almost unique, compared with recent movies.

Quite an interesting take on the alien invasion genre. I would have rated it an 8 but for the incredibly bad ending. That will be the biggest point of contention with viewers in this film. How it ends. You may like it. Not me. I thought the characters dissolved quite quickly. Still worth a watch.

It's cheesy but commits to its approach and is good fun all the way through. It did a better job ending it than many action sci-fi movies. Well worth a watch!

It's not Blade Runner, but it doesn't think it is.

Sounds great on your home theater. Loud and full of battles.

After you get over the dubbing which is in no way bad just a little wierd with lip movement not matching this is surprisingly good. The English dubbing is actually very well done. I get hints of skyline, battle Los Angeles and maybe even falling skies. I won't spoil the plot but I will say its pretty good. Not being familiar with Russian movies I have no idea if there are stars in it, but the acting is perfectly acceptable. There are a few well placed special effects all of which were tastefully and professionally done. I went in with low expectations and enjoyed it. As in a previous comment maybe a bit more editing would have been nice because it's a bit long for 2 hours.

This movie is by far no masterpiece, but I was still intrigued and entertained almost all the way through. Perhaps it's partially because I am allergic to the American action movies of today, which are all just plastic, empty, uncreative, gradually deteriorating, incestuous clones of one another and this Russian film offers slightly different solutions, visually and storywise. The dialogue is pretty bad at times (the English dub I watched because I couldn't get my hands on the original probably made it 50% worse) and the ending is very disappointing storywise but visually it's a cool movie, very athmospheric, great scenery, great action scenes. I know it's not a very high bar, but all in all it's still better than anything coming out of the US.

Would I recommend it? Yeah. If you don't expect greatness, you'll have a good time.