Interceptor

To reprimand a movie as pathetic, foolish, boring etc. is a very (harsh) personal statement of private feelings. I for myself felt entertained although I'm not one of the three 1) under-aged 2) drunk during watching 3) a member of the cast. Maybe I was in a (too ?) good mood, but I didn't oversee many lacks in plot originality, script writing, dialogs, and so on. What I oversaw was any of the three attributes pathetic/foolish/boring, where one who is really willing can throw them at SF-giants like Bladerunner, 2001, District 9, Matrix, or even Solaris.

The movie itself seems to be an interesting mixture of the common solitary fighter flick (there are soo many), a German car advertisement clip (like Transporter 2) for Russian mobster clients, Matrix (yes hate me), and Stalker (now kill me). Someone will possibly feel left alone with a certain lack of prologue, explanations, character development, and so on, either because Writer and Director weren't able to deliver those, or they simply didn't want to. I wasn't really disturbed about this. A bit of unconventionality can never harm, and I for myself get often bored by endless monologues or sad back-flashes, which are both not present in Interceptor.

What I saw on the positive side were upper-class visuals, fine locations, decent actors (despite they have not so much to "act") and a kind of Russian mood, quite different from Bekmambetov's in his Day/Nighwatch hit series (which I enjoyed at a max), but still present. The production values are O.K., especially in 3d graphics, everything and everyone is serious and believable, maybe even because there are some holes where viewers can fill in their own imaginations.

On the negative side is the plot, which is not exactly a brainwave, but being serious, this it have in common with, say, Avatar's plot. Further, characters are only outlined and stay colorless at a cool distance from us. Action scenes seem only to be thrown in by the god of scriptwriting to fill some minutes until the end. Relations between characters are foreseeable and mostly cliché.

Nevertheless Interceptor has its qualities to entertain, primarily with CGI visuals, and a with a strange myth of alien powers, which are existing in a parallel dimension right beneath ours since thousands of years, fighting against each other, utilizing us (Russians) for their own and seemingly senseless war (Nochnoi Dozor hails).

I gave an 8 to raise the unfair rating of 3.6 a bit. I think it deserves about 6.5, if you look at the IMO ridiculous Chronicles of Riddic (6.4), or Stargate Continuum (7.4 !), or The Matrix itself, which has a higher rating (8.7) than Stalker (8.1), Solaris (8.0) or 2001 (8.4) only because of wicked leather clothing ;-)

The only good thing about this movie is that it is quite short. All the time of watching it I have been hesitating - to stay or to leave. At last I decided to watch until the end just because I was too lazy to make any additional moves. It is the kind of movie which is possible to watch in three cases only - 1) you are underage; 2) you are drunk; 3) you are one of the cast or crew. I am nothing of above. I even didn't like how it was cut technically. It almost had no any bright color smears. Looked constantly grey - even not like made in black and white - that would be classic - but boring grey. And that terrible electronic set of sounds - I cannot call it music... And it is to say nothing of the plot. When a powerful organization instead of just sending a sniper to kill a lonely guy on the lake sends a moto boat full of stupid freaks with guns... Just because it would be more picturesque when you watch it on a big screen...

Writer-director Konstantin Maksimov had a unique story to tell with a unique vision. Unfortunately he wasn't capable of conveying the message very clearly. The visuals are striking, but not much of the film or characters are explained, leaving the viewer dangling wondering what to make of it all. There are some nice action sequences, but they're few and far between and the accompanying music is very bland. Although the actors are trying their best, the plot is just too confusing for it to make sense.

While I have enjoyed some of Russian movies made in latter years, and grew to very much like some of Russian actors and actresses, I could not possibly say the same about this movie. This movie originally had quite a good potential - some pretty nice sci-fi hero storyline to begin with (and don't tell me that books are better, much better - I already know that and that is true in almost every case), a quite strong young Russian actor for a lead (Petrenko), but the result is more than lousy. Kind of the movie was about nothing. Did anyone get what it was about or what it was meant to be about? I did not. And all the time during viewing it felt as if I was wasting my time, which was quite true at the end. Here I must agree with the other comment on this movie that the visual greyness throughout the movie was tiresome and rather annoying. If that was part of FXs introduced to create some special atmosphere, then it totally and ultimately failed. Actually this movie IMHO failed in every possible aspect as it haven't delivered a story nor a likable characters (I doubt if even the very true fans of actors' could possible have found anything at all to enjoy this time).

For a conclusion, I would like to say here that I doubt no more in Russians' abilities to make a good FXs, but respectively they also could realize that strong FXs and nothing to support 'em cannot make a trick of a good movie no more. We've seen that in Daywatch and Nightwatch, but to watch so many movies with FXs and non-existent story lines is getting just too much. Move on, please.

This is a truly awful film, that has to be said, but somehow they've put so much energy into the special effects that it becomes sort of compelling, in the sense you want to see how bad it can get. The plot is a very basic, juvenile fantasy of good and evil. In this case evil in corrupt politicians who are run by evil forces from another dimension opposed by the good guys, a joint effort of a rebellious vigilante group, a lone wolf special ops agent and som white magic types that look like they may have escaped from a Canadian spin-off of Lord of the Rings together with the cheesy green screen backgrounds. The overall effect is rather as if you would start off with a Turkish soap opera, add some Transporter, a dash of The Matrix, some snatches from Counterstrike. It has a certain entertainment value if you don't have to pay for it.