Sibéria

How a film this poor gets made is beyond me.

Dreadful attempt at a plot. Absent character development.

Canada as Siberia? Almost funny.

The two stars are for beautiful St Petersburg - about the only thing worth noting in this sorry excuse for a film.

My wife and I watched this at home, it was free from our public library. We like Reeves, he has been in many good movies. In this one he was also a Producer, in the DVD "extra" he even praised the script.

Well we disagree, the script is mediocre and the execution is mediocre. It is never very clear what all is going on and who all the players are and what their motives are. Plus a couple of seemingly incongruent sex scenes are thrown in.

My best guess is Reeves plays a man who deals in criminal diamond trades, has some legitimate blue diamonds and some fakes that can only be identified using a spectrometer. In Russia he has to deal with various guys who in the end seem to want him dead.

So while I can't say it was a complete waste of time we certainly expected something better. The movie is flat, obscure, and dull most of the time.

This film tells the story of an American man who goes to Russia for a deal of blue diamonds.

The film starts off moderately good, but five minutes later it becomes horrendous. It becomes a romantic film, but there is no chemistry at all. They two characters do not seem attracted to each other, and their romance is contrived and unconvincing. After fifty minutes of romance, finally we get to see diamond related scenes again. Yet, these diamond scenes are just more excuses to have sex scenes. It just becomes quite ridiculous. The pace is slow, the story is implausible and the film just has no thrill or engagement. It is a plain bore, and does not captivate me at all. Frankly, it is quite a disappointing film.

This film was agonisingly painful to watch. Even the sex scenes were non eventful.

The screenplay destroyed any potential this film may have had.

The story is absolutely useless and unnecessary from start to midpoint. The remainder of the scenes where convoluted (especially the ending) and so dragged out - especially the lame sex scenes.

I had to fast forward most of the long scenes as I was losing my interest and patience. What were the writers thinking? A 5th grader could have written this better.

This film suffered an identity crisis; what is soft porn? what is a romance? was it a thriller? was it spy film? There was certainly no action or suspense. There where so many plot issues and more holes than in Swiss cheese.

The cinematography was the main highlight, then the acting, and finally the directing was fairly decent, although the director should have demanded this film be edited down - especially the dragged out useless scenes to perhaps a short film. 104 mins was waaay too long for the pacing that was so ridiculously slow. The score was also annoying.

As a huge fan of KR, this was a big disappointment and he should have passed on this one. A 3/10 from me only for the very few positive traits.