I saw the poster of this movie in the "coming soon" section of Indonesian cinema chains websites around 2 weeks ago. I was intrigued to see this one during the weekend as its premise seemed to be interesting, regarding Alien space ship that crashed on earth. So on Saturday, since my wife unfortunately could not accompany me to see the movie as she already had other engagement with her sister, I went to see it by myself at the 11.30 AM show. I was lucky enough I could still manage to get a nice seat despite being fashionably late reaching the theater (I arrived exactly at 11.30 AM). Well let us get on to the movie itself now, shall we?
Brief Story Line
During a rare meteor shower on the skies of Russia, an alien space ship somehow reached the atmosphere of earth very closely. The Russian air force was worried about the danger it might pose and tried to shoot it down. However, the shooting did not blow the space ship but only made it losing its balance and control and fell on the city of Russia, damaging buildings and killing hundreds of people in the process.
During this incident, a high school student named Yulia (Irina Starshenbaum) was together with her boyfriend Artyom (Alexander Petrov) and they were some of the lucky survivors of the space ship crash. Yulia's father, colonel Lebedev (Oleg Menshikov) was very upset with Artyom as he believed she would not have been in this position had she not gone out with him. Colonel Lebedev also happened to be appointed by Russian government to be in charge of the alien situation.
The crash site was immediately closed and fenced and the city put under curfew. Lebedev and another Russian envoy went to the crash site and met with the alien who seemed to be in humanoid form (2 legs and 2 arms). Even though it did not say a word, Lebedev was able to understand what it was trying to say. He tried to convince the Russian government that the alien just need to repair their ship and they would leave earth.
Meanwhile, Yulya, Artyom and their other friends were very upset with the landing of this alien spaceship which killed lots of their friends and families. They were trying to find out what their intention were and also tried to make sure they leave earth as soon as possible. Things also got complicated with another character named Hijken (Rinal Mukhametov) who made Yulya doubt what she thought about the alien and also her feelings towards Artyom.
So what was actually the reason for the alien space ship to come to earth? Where did they come from? Would the Russian government and army be able to hold peace in the neighborhood so the alien can repair the space ship and leave earth without going to war? Find them all in this exciting science fiction movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well I got to admit that I was actually enjoying the movie a lot. Despite the entire movie was spoken in Russian, but the story was very easy to understand and it was way better than another Russian movie that I saw last month titled Guardians. I think because the movie was not dubbed in English, we could feel the emotions of the characters, unlike in Guardians which was fully dubbed in English, making the characters to be emotionless. Although there was a flaw at the last 10-15 minutes of the movie where some translations went missing and we could not understand what the people were trying to say.
In term of the movie's special effects, I think it was surprisingly good for a movie with not a very high budget. The CGI of the space ship reaching earth and fell to the buildings were done very nicely. And the aliens form and movement were also good & believable. The sound effects of the movie was also pretty good. You could enjoy the amazing sounds during the early part and the climax of the movie.
This movie is having combination of drama and suspense and little bit of mystery on the alien's intention. It is not to be compared with alien invasion movie like Independence Day or War of the Worlds though, but it is more comparable to Arrival. Though Arrival was having much more drama and a lot heavier in term of story line. I also enjoyed the performance of Rinal Mukhametov as Hijken and also Evgeniy Mikheev as a fellow student called "Google". I think those two gave the movie a bit more fun, especially Google's behavior in the hospital scene.
Ultimately, the movie did provide us a deep moral message towards the end. I do believe that if aliens truly exist, those would probably be their thoughts. In conclusion, if you are looking for a good science fiction movie with good special effects and you do not mind watching it in Russian, then you could definitely enjoy this one. I honestly think that you should definitely give this one a try. Who knows, it might surprise you just like it did to me.
Oh ya, before I forgot, there was no scenes at all after the end credit scene.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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