Cidade Sombria

I can't remember the worst film I have watched.Total waste of actors and audience time.If you prefer sitting by your TV and think when will be this film over,then this is the right film for you.Maybe this film is recorded to make people believe that Moscow has some mystique past. But I must say I have not expect anything else from Rade Serbedzija,but I have expected more from Vincent Gallo.The film lacks a plot, character,development,denouement.Entire movie is about underground tunnels and how they are mystique.I must be fair there is some camera effect but even that is too poor.Over and over are the same pictures.Total waste of time.

In Moscow, the priest Owen (Vincent Gallo) hires a team to guide him in the underworld to find his friend Sergei (Rade Serbedzija) that is missing while researching the legend about the existence of demons and an entrance to hell beneath the city.

I bought this DVD based on the name of Val Kilmer and the interesting pictures on the cover. I am totally disappointed since this film is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I do not understand how Val Kilmer accepted to participate in this production. There are two shameful reviews in IMDb promoting this movie and they are typically fake, written by users with only one review in this site. There are two possible ways to see this boring and awful film: my wife and I napped many times because of the monotony of this pointless story, and we used the rewind button of the DVD to repeat each lost scene. However, the correct way should have been the use of the fast forward or the stop button, to end this crap faster. My vote is one.

Title (Brazil): "Cidade Sombria" ("Dark City")

If they had a Zero out of 10 I would of entered it. Everyone involved in this film should be ashamed of themselves taking money from the public. I don't know how films like this get released Video or Pay Channel. I am disappointed in Vincent Gallo. Val Kilmer was in it for about 8 minutes, so I can't get that mad at him. Only the person who listed him to be the star in it. It is like Marlon Brando in Superman.There is no plot except Gallo searching and finding his friend in the catacombs. Why they were searching for the gates of hell only the director knows. They should of kept this film in Moscow and burned it for fire to keep all the homeless extras warm for the night. There is nothing more to say about this film that all the other reviewers have written. I wish I could forget this movie it hurts my brain.

If you enjoy sitting in the dark, both literally and figuratively, for ninety minutes then this is the movie for you.

A waste of actors, resources and audience time. Ultimately a waste of space. Don't be tempted by the resume. There is nothing of any further substance beyond it. The film lacks all of the basics that you might expect from the genre; plot, character, development, denouement. The cast may perhaps take heart from the knowledge that in this instance their efforts will be entirely forgettable and, given time, their careers may perhaps improve.

Absolute tripe.

MOSCOW ZERO is a really dark, mystical and supernatural film. The plot is very straight to follow since it's just about a quest to find SERGEI (played by Rade Serbedzija) an old friend of the father OWEN (played by Vincent Gallo) that went to the catacombs of Moscow alone. The entire movie is passed in there. Though the film has a very open ending, which is, by the way, very well connected to the mysterious and mystical ambiance that is always present… What I appreciated the most in the film was precisely this mystical and supernatural ambiance of this story and the way it was shot. It has a great cinematography, creating very dark and claustrophobic scenarios. The soundtrack is also good, because it also has mysterious, dark, melancholic and melodic music, like a ghost story must have! One other detail that I also appreciated was the fact of the demons were characterized only as shadows, as a dark light in the underworld… I found it so much better than the traditional way of characterize demons as little monsters with sharpened teethes, horns and a back tail…

I think this film is very well produced, though I agree it's a bit slow sometimes and could have been more suspenseful. However I also think this melancholy present in the plot and the soundtrack fits perfectly in a dark and mystical story like this.

The acting is reasonably good, but I only would like to mention the Portuguese actor Joaquim de Almeida, playing YURI character… It was a surprise to me hearing him speaking some lines in Russian, but he's a "box of surprises" anyway…

I also would like to say that I think this movie is too much underrated here on IMDb. I Liked this film, especially because of its ambiance as I said before, and I found pretty absurd that a user can say things like this: "There are two shameful reviews in IMDb promoting this movie and they are typically fake, written by users with only one review in this site". Just because he has more than 3000 reviews he thinks he's opinion is better than anyone else's! It's really sad…

My final vote to this different but good film is 7/10.