O Guardião dos Mundos

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.

...as intention. Because , it has beautiful premises, an interesting story and a lot of CGI effects. And a nice cast. But, scene by scene, it becomes a montagne russe. From the high level to the down. Once. And again. The best part- the resurrection of the memories about fairy tales. Including Russian . The worlds, the order keeper, the fundamental change of life - a fear of each from us- are good points . But the problem becomes with the wrong use of obsessive love story. Sure, Dante and Beatrice or, maybe,"What Dreams may Come". But the entire architecture of film is brocked. Sure, a seductive idea with high potential. But not enough for be credible. And real seductive.

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.

This film is ambitious but falls far short it has to be said.

Based on a Russian book, which as far as I'm aware is not around in the English world, its another one multiverse movie. Ready Player One and others have been heavily influenced by tech and popular science books that have been popularising this area.

What we have here is really a Russian super games programmer who one day finds that he has been erased from the real world and trapped in a virtual world etc etc. Its not really worth explaining more. It ain't the Matrix and closer to Notting Hill! 20 years ago if this was being made it would have starred Hugh Grant in some English language remake.

It's beautifully made, often too self indulgent, and that's all that's good about it. It's quite a boring film. The only character of any interest is just indeciperhable. I can remember the actress from Babylon Berlin, and her character & look is 100% the same. Very unoriginal.

This film tries but misses the mark across the board. Apparently there could be more to come, but I think it is best to cut the losses here. A waste of time.

The main character starts off doing well but things start to go a bit wrong as the plot develops. From the start, a Sci-Fi film is revealed.

There's an annoying blonde in the film who is integral to the story, acting like a nemesis to the main character. She's fairly wooden in acting ability but also needed to counter the 'hero'.

The first half of the film is damn good. Has some decent action, visual effects and a good sense of direction. If the film had stayed on this course, it could've quite easily scored 8 or more as it really entertains.

However, the second part of the film is just odd, muddled, and let's the film down. The point of the plot, characters, etc, are just thrown away. Yes there are more action scenes but they seem to be sprinkled into the film at random.

Overall, this isn't a stinker as many other reviews seem to point out, but it does suffer from a weak second half.