Skvoz vremya

I have no idea why all the hate. I enjoyed this movie a lot and was very interested right up until the satisfying end. I watch a ridiculous amount of sci-fi and half of it is indie. I would normally give this a 6.5 but due to all the unfounded hate, I gave it a 7.

The Plot: It starts with a Tony Stark-type person and crew on a plane when it crash lands on an island. The unique power source of the plane is stolen. From here it gets interesting as this fog rolls in and basically, it is like the holodeck projecting a period from the past but also the future.

The mystery unravels as to what is causing the time projections, who stole their power source, what happened to their dad so many years ago and so on. There are unlikely alliances, betrayal, romance and sacrifice.

I won't ruin anything but the story seemed to wrap-up like all to many indie flicks with a moral message and a bad ending. But then the movie carried on for another 15 minutes and I found all of it very satisfying and wrapped up neatly. Overall a solid plot that stayed true to its own set of sci-fi rules.

Effects: For an indie sci-fi I thought the effects were adequate. It was enough to suspend my disbelief and I was pleased with the quality compared to other shows.

Why the low rating?

My guess is that it is a Russian film and they often get low ratings to start. The main actors were good but a couple of the supporting actors were cartoony.

But the biggest issue I had was with the dubbing. Often, the voice actors who dub go overboard and 'ham it up' which takes away from the believability. I am not sure who to fault with that but would like a 2nd opinion from someone who speaks Russian and watched it without dubbing.

I wonder if the plot got a bit complex for some. Movies with time-travel themes often get confusing. Tenet got that way in spots.

This is one I will probably watch again. I would love to see what someone like Nolan would do with it.

The whole movie has a stilted quality like anime or a video game cutscene. This could have been an interesting stylistic choice, but instead I'm pretty sure it's not intended. Much of it is due to the bad voice-over. It seems the movie was made for an English audience (the actors are mouthing English), but I think each actor's voice was redubbed. Poorly.

Then there's the cartoonishly stereotyped characters, and overused plot devices. It's not predictable so much as derivative.

Buoying all this up is some pretty decent production value. Sets and props are detailed and believable, cinematography and lighting are quite attractive. And Underneath it all is a fairly interesting story if you can get past the god-awful over-dubbing. And the god-awful MacGuffin name "quantanium".

Granted, the film suffers from a lack of budget and the voice dubbing (at least the French version) is of mediocre quality (but you get used to that in the end). The script often lacks credibility (for example, when a character is hit from behind, and gets up without trying to find out who hit him...). The background to the story isn't entirely original, and some of the plot elements are hackneyed. OK, OK. But if you make the effort to follow the first 45 minutes (i.e. With your smartphone switched off - this isn't a Facebook-compatible flick), the film gradually gains in depth and interest grows exponentially. It's an atypical science fiction film, or rather a typically Eastern European one, in the vein of the Polish or Russian science fiction writers of the 50s and 60s. Cerebral writing tinged with poetry, lyricism and romanticism.

Despite all its faults, which I don't dispute, I had a much more enjoyable and satisfying time watching it than I did watching The Rise of Skywalker. Not difficult, you might say. True, but ...

I generally like to watch any movies that have elements of time travel in them in any way. Even some of the low-budget time-travel b-movies out there can be enjoyable.

However this movie is totally let down by the voice acting/dubbing done. It appears the actors are mostly Russian and I imagine it was filmed in Russia too. The problem is, the actors do all speak in English but the voices we hear, very obviously, are not the actors on the screen. They seemingly had some random/generic American voice actors do ADR for the movie. Presumably because the Russian actors playing the parts had accents?

I feel like this odd choice ruined the film and really took me out of watching it. I would have rather had just heard the actors' real voices with their accents instead of this nonsense. Heck I would have even rathered they spoke in Russian and just had subtitles in English to what they did here.

Really odd production choice, I don't recall seeing another modern movie like this, and hope I don't come across another!

I'm really surprised by all the poor reviews in here. Right up front, this is not a "great" movie. I had doubts when I started it. Dubbing is, meh? Ok. Russian is hard to overdub to. I almost turned it off after 15 minutes or so, but it drew me in. Finally! A movie with a new storyline. One I hadn't come across before. It jumps back and forth in timelines, but in a very different way. It isn't the easiest movie to "follow", but that's OK. Think "Primer" or "Time Crimes". It's made on a smaller budget so don't expect HUGE CGI scenes. I found it quite entertaining. Others might not. But it is fresh, and worth a watch..