laxy56

Absolutely the most pretentious, stereotypical and generally idiotic piece ever. The (Russian) dialog is horrible, and the cartoonish pseudo-historical pieces are worse.

The director pretends to make a movie and the "enlightened" public pretends to like it. Here's the thing: the emperor has no clothes. It's neither deep nor visually impressive. If the one-take shot excites you, I think there should be some footage of that Guinness prize winning record for the longest time spent on top of a pole somewhere out there for you. It should be just about as boring and pointless as this "movie".

The plot is somewhat original, and all the actors did their job pretty well. There is a plenty of comic relief, too. Some things do not make a lot of sense (e.g. the first "chase" scene, why would the heroine not just hide somewhere and wait until the baddies leave?). The Russians actually speak Russian without accent, but the cars are extremely strange, with models spanning like 50 years, and so the place seems weirdly out of time. Overall, if you like thrillers you will probably like this one as well.

I am quite impressed. I have not watched the original (I've seen a couple of occasional episodes, and was not impressed at all, this one looks much better). The characters behave like real people, rather than some cartoonish heroes and villains. I liked the detailed political background, it really added quite a lot to the realism of the picture. Great acting, great production. These miniseries are already a great deal better than anything that ever came out of the Star Trek franchise, and how many series do we have there?

One thing though: couldn't they think of some _other_ design for the space military uniforms? Or is there some kind of sci-fi movie standard body out there that does not allow anyone to have anything else?