Skvoz vremya

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 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.

Overall the movie seems to be pretty good in terms of story and production quality but for some reason they chose to dub it into English even though it appears as though most of the movie is already in English. The voice acting is cheesy and doesn't often match what the actor is actually doing on screen. Would be interesting to see it with its original audio tracks and maybe subtitles for non-english moments.

When checking the rating and reviews, i really thought i'd stop watching after 15 minutes, at most.

It is not a technical high-end movie, it is often chaotic and sometimes difficult to follow, but it is definetly a nice watch on a boring evening.

Characters are recognizable and there are some nice twists in the writing and some twists that leave some opening for the audience to make up their own mind about a couple of things.

Don't think too much in high rated time traveling movies. The concept is not surprising, but not very often used.

It took some time to figure the back and forth out, but eventually it gives a 'aaahhhh' in recognition.

A moderate well B-movie and if you have some time on hand and don't want to think too much in difficult sci-fi terms and twists, it is a nice time filler with a cup of coffee and a coockie.

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".