From director Fyodor Bondarchuk comes another ambitious sci-fi project. But just like with his previous sci-fi double feature "Dark Planet"/"Dark Planet: Rebellion" the idea behind the film is excellent and does pose certain questions about humanity and its future and about paranoid military controlling such events. But when it comes to the storytelling and directing things aren't so pretty. The filmmakers do an excellent job in the special effects department, but the same cannot be said about either plot, dialogues or jerky editing. The main problem I had, though, was how unbelievable the story was. I just couldn't help thinking that the screenwriters, having a brilliant idea for the film, had to fill the two-hour screen time with some nonsense just to get from point A to point B. Most of it didn't make any sense.
The Russian title of the film has a double meaning and can be translated as both "Attraction" (the aliens being attracted to the controversial human race or the attraction between the girl and the alien) and "Gravity" (their ship experiencing a breakdown and is pulled by Earth gravity into the atmosphere).
So it starts off with some excellent CGI in the first few minutes with an alien ship flying through the air chased and being shot at by fighter jets and crashing down in the middle of Moscow's highly populated residential high-rise apartment blocks area. There is a heavy military involvement right from the start, with emergency military headquarters put in place and a secure perimeter around the crash site set up. Well, a promising, ambitious and therefore demanding start for a story of the first alien contact in human history.
From this point on things go from bad to worse. The movie does feel like a cross-breed between Independence Day, K-PAX and District 9, but precisely because these are very different movies (an action packed epic, a philosophical drama and a reality show set up in dirty slums with street violence and abuse of the helpless aliens), one could not cross-breed them. Well, this flick tries to be everything of the above: a philosophical action-packed alien- contact filled-with-CGI-and-military-hardware gangster street fighting school-girl love story. And precisely because of that it fails in each of these departments.
* WARNING - SPOILERS *
After a few minutes this alien contact "epic" turns into a teenage school-gang movie. The closer it gets to the end the smaller and sillier the action becomes. It might as well have been naughty adventures of a school girl who falls out with her military colonel father several times a day (who's running the operation), has a couple of boyfriends one of whom just happens to be an alien and the other - a brokenhearted violent thug from a gang trying to kill the poor alien.
There are lots of things in the story that don't make any sense. For example: kids being able to go in and out and walk around unnoticed in the supposedly tightest security area around the ship and even carrying a huge alien bio-suit out of the area; the school girl driving into the area in a Range Rover and carrying out a wounded alien, then taking him to a hospital room unchecked and performing blood transfusion herself using sophisticated equipment; the alien looking just like a bloke from around the corner, speaking Russian, getting arrested by the police and the girl walking into the police building and just getting him out of there. It just goes on and on. I don't mind some oddities in a film but as long as they are explained or made look logical, it's fine. Not in this film. It just feels the creators don't have much respect for the audience.
* END OF SPOILERS *
Right at the end, though, the creators do manage to hit the right buttons and rap up the story with a rather nice and even emotional ending, saving it from a complete disaster with some more excellent CGI from inside the alien ship and finally some words that make sense but it hardly turns the movie into a piece of art.
Points for the idea and special effects. The rest ranges from average to disappointing. Worth taking a look, though, if you are a sci-fi fan. There is a link to a trailer with English subs on this page under External sites.
The Russian title of the film has a double meaning and can be translated as both "Attraction" (the aliens being attracted to the controversial human race or the attraction between the girl and the alien) and "Gravity" (their ship experiencing a breakdown and is pulled by Earth gravity into the atmosphere).
So it starts off with some excellent CGI in the first few minutes with an alien ship flying through the air chased and being shot at by fighter jets and crashing down in the middle of Moscow's highly populated residential high-rise apartment blocks area. There is a heavy military involvement right from the start, with emergency military headquarters put in place and a secure perimeter around the crash site set up. Well, a promising, ambitious and therefore demanding start for a story of the first alien contact in human history.
From this point on things go from bad to worse. The movie does feel like a cross-breed between Independence Day, K-PAX and District 9, but precisely because these are very different movies (an action packed epic, a philosophical drama and a reality show set up in dirty slums with street violence and abuse of the helpless aliens), one could not cross-breed them. Well, this flick tries to be everything of the above: a philosophical action-packed alien- contact filled-with-CGI-and-military-hardware gangster street fighting school-girl love story. And precisely because of that it fails in each of these departments.
* WARNING - SPOILERS *
After a few minutes this alien contact "epic" turns into a teenage school-gang movie. The closer it gets to the end the smaller and sillier the action becomes. It might as well have been naughty adventures of a school girl who falls out with her military colonel father several times a day (who's running the operation), has a couple of boyfriends one of whom just happens to be an alien and the other - a brokenhearted violent thug from a gang trying to kill the poor alien.
There are lots of things in the story that don't make any sense. For example: kids being able to go in and out and walk around unnoticed in the supposedly tightest security area around the ship and even carrying a huge alien bio-suit out of the area; the school girl driving into the area in a Range Rover and carrying out a wounded alien, then taking him to a hospital room unchecked and performing blood transfusion herself using sophisticated equipment; the alien looking just like a bloke from around the corner, speaking Russian, getting arrested by the police and the girl walking into the police building and just getting him out of there. It just goes on and on. I don't mind some oddities in a film but as long as they are explained or made look logical, it's fine. Not in this film. It just feels the creators don't have much respect for the audience.
* END OF SPOILERS *
Right at the end, though, the creators do manage to hit the right buttons and rap up the story with a rather nice and even emotional ending, saving it from a complete disaster with some more excellent CGI from inside the alien ship and finally some words that make sense but it hardly turns the movie into a piece of art.
Points for the idea and special effects. The rest ranges from average to disappointing. Worth taking a look, though, if you are a sci-fi fan. There is a link to a trailer with English subs on this page under External sites.