Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

marina_simakova This Strugatsky adaptation is in my opinion is made very close to the book and showing very well the complexity of the plot and the ideas of Strugatsky. Bravo for the film director for being brave enough to do it so detailed. To better understand the movie is it the best to read the book or at least the short description of the plot. The costumes and special effects are quite qualitative and definitely can stand to the Hollywood standard. I found the movie being highly underrated and extremely enjoyable. In my opinion it deserves to be added to the classics of sci fi, even through Massaraksh universe visually reminds Blade runner universe. Inhibited island plot, as generally Strugatsky novels is complex and maybe that is the reason why the movie was not valued and understood properly. My recommendation - to watch if you like serious science fiction and want to savor a great visual spectacle. Strugatsky in my opinion is the best there is of science fiction, or one of the best and being so serious about the books I would be very critical towards bad adaptation. But this one is a real success!

mixoptical I have read and enjoyed the book and decided to watch this movie. First let me point out that I was really excited about it so perhaps my expectations were a bit high.This movie is based on a great (in my opinion) novel. The story is captivating and original. This movie keeps close to the the book with minor differences, which sadly affect the experience very dramatically.The creators absolutely discarded the atmosphere of the book. The gray apocalyptic setting of the novel was transformed into circus-like colorful (yellow and blue) scene. The world, on which the main character finds himself stranded seems more like it came from a funny cartoon rather than unbelievably horrible, hopeless and altogether dark "end of days" scenario, as it is described in the book. The main aspect became the special effects that are there just for the sake of showing off the computer graphics abilities, and are seen with no connection to what is going on in the movie.The acting is terrible, it seems as though they picked random people from the street and asked them to act. There are no visible emotions, besides anger, and the anger itself seems just like a crazy person making a "scary face" as it performed by most of the actors.To summarize, the movie suits someone with mental level of a five year old, although i wouldn't show that much violence to a five year old...

donche_ru Can't understand all this negative hysteria. Most of which is actually about nothing ("crap! oh, such a crap! totally crap!" often mentioning that Bondarchuk is a bad director). Well, I can partly understand those who admired the original book (which is really worth reading) as they may have imagined everything in different manner (this is particularly true for sci-fi adaptations). But very often I read comments of people who seemed to be negatively oriented even before they really watched the film. The movie is not piece of art. It really takes a lot from classic sci-fi movies (from costumes designs to city views). And directing sometimes is confusing. But the film has one strong point - the plot, original story that authors reflected rather well. Special effects are good (they were performed by American specialists), acting is not bad (dramatic acting usually is not required in sci-fi action movies). In essence, the movie is good and worth seeing. Don't take negative comments for granted.BTW as far as I know Boris Strugaztsky (the one of two brothers who is still alive) liked the adaptation.

Octavian August In fact neither I nor my company had expected to be strongly impressed by the movie, when we joined to watch it on Saturday night. But having read the Strugatsky's plot-book, I was amazed that the director had followed the story so precisely. The only evident mistake was the premature assassination of one of the characters. Still the impression on the film is partial due to its halves shown with a 4 month break.As to fighting scenes, I estimate them as dead. There was almost NO real action. The usage of Bullet Time technology of matrix all fight long turned the action into slow and boring trash. The martial arts instructors should really be ashamed of this.There is a Russian proverb: "The first pancake is laid shapeless". It is just about the film. The spectator expected to see a miracle, because a $40million worth Russian film is considered like a $400million Hollywood movie. This expectations of a common viewer were ruined. I do hope that next attempts of Russian directors and producers to catch up with Hollywood will be more successful.